MONKEY CHRIST

Botched Church Makeover Leaves Cherubs Looking Like Monkeys

“I don’t want to say too much, but those eyes and painted lips really grab your attention,” one restoration expert said of the “monkey-like” cherubs.

The botched restoration of an 18th century Spanish church in the town Soria has left the cherubs looking like monkeys and restoration experts puzzled. El Confidencial reported Thursday that the botched restoration is the second coming of “Ecce Homo” or “Monkey Christ,” referring to another botched restoration which went viral 12 years ago. “We’re not talking about a failed restoration here; we’re talking about an assault on heritage,” Francisco Manuel Espejo, president of Spain’s Professional Association of Restorers and Conservators, said in a statement of the failed restoration. The heritage society of Soria told the Spanish paper that the restorers had not done the preliminary research into the church’s historical aesthetics. “We’ve ended up with the decorative elements being outlined and the cherubs–which were white before–becoming caricature-like,” the group told El Confidencial. The heritage society of Soria blamed local officials for not designating the church a historical site in a post on X, writing, “the refusal of the Junta de Castilla y León to declare the right bank of the Duero River BIC, which would include the intramural slopes that they left outside the Historical Complex of the Old Town of Soria, has its consequences as seen in the hermitage of the Virgen del Voyeur.”