“It Got Out of Control”: Cecilia Gimenez Reveals “Beast Jesus” Origin Story in New Interview

“I was only trying to do a good thing, I wanted to return it to its former glory,”

“I was only trying to do a good thing, I wanted to return it to its former glory,” Cecilia Giménez told the Telegraph recently. “But very quickly it started to go wrong, the paint absorbed into the damp. It got out of control.” The 82-year-old volunteer art restorer responsible for the greatest (art) meme of 2012, “Beast Jesus,” said she wishes she could undo her work on the damaged 19th-century fresco in her first U.K. interview.

“I never would have attempted it if I knew it would lead to this,” Giménez told the Telegraph. “I started it, then I went on holiday and by the time I returned, well… you know what happened.”

Gimenez, a painter of Impressionist landscapes and street scenes around the Spanish town of Borja, where she lives and where the “Beast Jesus” fresco has been drawing record crowds, recently put one of her own works up for auction on eBay to raise money for a charity. Otherwise, she has not sought to cash in on her huge and unexpected popularity.

“All my life I’ve painted as a way to relax, to help me forget my misfortune,” she told the Telegraph. “I’ve had lots of exhibitions and sold work to people in the town. As an artist, one wants to be known, but not for creating something one isn’t proud of, not for being a joke.”

— Benjamin Sutton

(Image via Cecilia Giménez on Facebook.)