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12 thoughts on “crayola davinci.”

  2. I’m sure she did it while no one was looking. I mean seriously, a lot of churches are basically empty during the week day, or evening. Some old lady walks in, no one will give her a second look and she sets up and does her thing.

    My friend just laughed, he says “its tragic, but luckily Spain has HUNDREDS of churches with old fresco’s so it’s not like it’s a disaster. It’s not like it’s the Sistine chapel or something.”

    Good Point. I think North Americans not living under the accumulated weight of centuries of this stuff get way more worked up than Italians and Spaniards who have to make an effort to avoid digging up and damaging yet another freakin’ ancient monument in some places.

    I remember reading a funny story about Rome’s “sewer guys” and how the under ground of Rome is like a fun-house where you have modern, medieval and ancient sewers (plus MUCH else) all mixed together, how they come together, have blow outs into one another without people noticing, etc…, etc… and how digging even a simple place in Rome is a big archeological deal. In the USA it’d be a show stopper, there , meh, another roman house basement.

  3. Gerry N.: I doubt the folks running the church had any reason to suspect that she was about to do this. If they had, they would have run her off immediately.

    And I’m pretty sure she waited until no one was around to stop her. This is often a component of senility … they only act competently when it can cause problems with the people trying to prevent them from causing harm.

  5. It strikes me as far more sad than funny. Yes, someone should have been watching more closely, both over the elderly lady and over the church, but a rather moving piece of art has probably been seriously damaged, if not destroyed (depends on what the overpaints did to the subsurface). That strikes me as grounds for sorrow rather than derision.

  6. Not sure how a botched painting in Spain explains the Italian mess, or how Italian irresponsibility leads to art ruins in Spain…but I love Kristophr’s line & will thusly botch it up myself: “…a Community Organizer having a Chicago moment, and then trying to excuse it by saying “Well, no one stopped me!” ”

    Sure could explain the mess in Washington.

    I think the old gal did a wonderful job…for a three-year-old. And like a three-year-old I’d bet she had a lot of fun while she was doing it.

  7. Kristopher,

    There had to be idiots involved, many idiots, including the 80 yr old incompetent “Artiste” herself. Where ws the Priest, the townspeople, the police, her minders? How did she gain access to a ceiling fresco, and who didnt’ simply take away the stepladder? Why didn’t her granddids take her back to the home? It had to have been more than a moment, there are hours and hours of effort there in ordeer th have completely destroyed an otherwise restorable image. It is no wonder the Italians are in the mess they’re in. No personal responsibility. If some dizzy ol’ bat came into the church I worsipped in then began drawing over the old paintings, I’d have screamed bloody murder at least, if not physically shoving the old blister out the door. 80 yr old senior moment, my ass.

    Gerry N.

  8. Gerry N.: Not an idiot … an 80 year old lady having a senior moment, and then trying to excuse it by saying “Well, no one stopped me!”

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