Oil painting by Ecco Homo ‘restorer’ fetches €1,080 on eBay

PUBLISHED: December 18, 2012 at 11:10 am  •  LAST EDITED: December 18, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Lead, National News  •  1 Comments

• Bodegas of Borja by Cecilia Gimenez

By Eloise Horsfield

ART by a Spanish pensioner who botched the restoration of a 19^th century Ecce Homo painting has sold for over €1,000 on eBay.

Cecilia Gimenez, 80, from Borja in Aragon, made headlines all over the world when she attempted to ‘touch up’ the portrait, by Elias Garcia Martinez – with disastrous results.

This morning, a landscape of Borja painted by Gimenez fetched €1,080 on the bidding site eBay.

After Gimenez donated painting ‘Bodegas of Borja’ to church-owned radio station Cope in nearby Zaragoza, they decided to sell it online.

Within four hours nine bids had been made on the oil on canvas, pushing up its price to over €400.

The price was eventually pushed to over €1,080 with a total of 52 offers made, and bidding ending this morning.

All proceeds will go to the Catholic charity Caritas.

The paintings join a number of other enterprising sellers on the site who are offering t-shirts, badges and posters displaying Gimenez’s original ‘work’ (shown below alongside the original), which made Gimenez the subject of much media attention back in August.

While shunning journalists at first, Gimenez has since embraced her popularity and will be appearing on Spanish TV channel Neox in the new year.

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