Cecilia Giménez Zueco of Borja in northeast Spain hit the headlines in 2012 when she gave to the world her “striking” restoration of a fresco of Jesus Christ. The work in question, Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man” in Latin) by the 19th-century painter Elias Garcia Martinez, had been housed for more than 100 years in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza. Giménez’s unusual reworking went viral, earning the nickname Monkey Christ because the head resembled a hairy monkey (it even inspired a Twitter profile, @eccemono, with its own hashtags).
Giménez has sadly died, aged 94. In a tribute on Facebook, Borja’s mayor, Eduardo Arilla highlighted that in August 2012, she became a global phenomenon as the protagonist of “Ecce Homo de Borja”. “Cecilia, with the best intention decided to repaint the work,” he stressed. “The world knew her through this anecdote but all of us already knew the great person she was and will remain in our memory.”
At the time, the controversy left Giménez distraught.“I felt devastated,” she told The New York Times. “They said it was a crazy, old woman who destroyed a portrait that was worth a lot of money.”There were silver linings to the botch job however. More than 150,000 tourists from all over the world came to see Giménez’s artistic endeavour, boosting the town’s coffers (according to Artnet News, the town’s Centro de Interpretación Ecce Homo, opened in 2016, putting the infamous piece in context). Giménez even went on to stage an art exhibition in Borja, showing 28 of her own paintings.
