Mark of the beast Jesus

In Borja, Spain, there was a fresco of little note by Elias Garcia Martinez, an artist I guarantee you had never heard of until this particular debacle.

Cecelia Gimenez, a well-meaning octogenarian, decided to touch up the fading paint and bleached colors.

Unfortunately, her restoration attempt ended up looking uncannily like the illegitimate love child of a Neanderthal and Chewbacca from Star Wars. This incident has left members of the community, the art world and the public at large divided on the question of what ought to be done.

If it is even possible to restore the painting from its restored condition, the church has brought in restoration experts to assess the damage and decide.

However, “Beast Jesus” has become something akin to the patron saint of Internet memes. Sites such as Tumblr and Twitter have exploded with jokes and references to the restored fresco, because it’s frankly hilarious.

Granted, the fresco has been transformed from a nondescript icon of Jesus into something resembling a cubist werewolf. Perhaps a Borja fresco was not the best place to express such an avant garde sensibility, and great time, energy and money should be spent to make the fresco conform again.

On the other hand, it seems that all art, and maybe even all life in general, is littered with tales of accidents and happenstance with bizarre and hilarious end results.

We aren’t saying the Da Vincis and Picassos of the world should be used for amateur finger-painting, but maybe we should let this one well-intentioned, hideous and quintessentially human painting stand so that future generations can be equally amused.

No one loses. Even Elias Garcia Martinez became famous.

Whether the painting should be removed, condemned, returned to its original state or offered as a sacrifice to the dark god of Tumblr and Internet trolls, none of us could completely decide.

Even with our distinct lack of artistic knowledge, we were at least able to agree that Cecelia Gimenez’s masterpiece looked nothing like the pale, lanky, long-haired and clean-shaven savior of mankind that hailed from Jewish, Middle-Eastern parents, and that’s terrible.