Another restoration that went wrong: in Tenerife, a priest allegedly “destroyed” frescoes that were more than 300 years old in a local church

In Spain, there is yet another unusual case of a restoration gone wrong. The incident occurred at the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua, in Tenerife, after a local priest accidentally ordered that the wall where the frescoes, which were more than 300 years old, were located, be restored and painted again.

The priest Héctor Lunar guarantees that, since arriving on the Spanish island in 2022, he was never informed about the existence of the frescoes and their importance for the church and the local population. “Nobody told me about it. All I wanted to do was paint that part of the church to prepare it for the Holy Week events,” he told local newspaper El día.

The frescoes were discovered during the church’s last restoration works, two decades ago, and were covered with protective paint to preserve the paintings. According to the priest, the work aimed to eliminate the humidity on the walls – as the layer covering the frescoes had deteriorated over the years.

The seriousness of the situation generated a wave of protests by the region’s inhabitants and led to the opening of an investigation by the regional government of the Canary Islands. The priest apologized to the authorities and the religious community of El Tanque and recognizes that he should have been informed before starting the renovation work on the church.

“A crime was committed against the historical heritage of our municipality”, reads a Facebook post by the Irmandade de Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem from El Tanque.

The fresh produce is already being analyzed by andspecialists in local and regional heritage in an attempt to reverse the damage caused. “We are now in the hands of God and those who have the right knowledge” stated the priest.

According to the Spanish press, the priest guarantees that when consulting the Vice-president and councilor for Works and Services at El Tanque City Council, he was not informed about the existence of the frescoes inside the church but rather on a wall outside and that the works should be carried out by a specialized team.

Through social networks, Jennifer Rosales, presented her version of the story and highlighted the “delicate” nature of the initiative and that the priest simply ignored her instructions.

SIMILARITIES WITH OTHER CASES IN SPAIN

This is not the first time that a restoration attempt, linked to the church, has not had the expected result. In 2012, the episode known as “Monkey Christ” spread around the world after Cecilia Giménez, 81 years old at the time, decided to restore the painting “Ecce Homo”. Despite the “disastrous” result, painting became a true phenomenon that, according to the The worldby the year 2022, it would have been visited by at least 300 thousand people from 130 countries.

In 2018, a wooden sculpture of Saint George was also the victim of a “restoration attempt” that went wrong. At the time, the statue was reportedly left in the hands of an art teacher who carried out its restoration, but the parish priest of the church of Saint Michael of Estella – where the work of art was located – stated that he had only ordered the cleaning of the sculpture.

The most recent case dates back to 2020, when a Spanish art collector asked a furniture restorer, cleaning a painting by Baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Despite several attempts made to recover the original painting, the painting that represented the figure of the Immaculate Conception, was left unrecognizable and the result ended up being considered, by some professionals in the field of conservation and restoration, as an “act of vandalism”.

Text by Mariana Jerónimo, edited by Mafalda Ganhão