Very few of us find fame quite as late, or quite as brutally, as Cecilia Giménez did in the summer of 2012. The Spanish amateur artist was already 81 when her efforts to restore a decent, if unremarkable, fresco of the scourged Christ brought her a renown that almost destroyed her.

Almost overnight, Giménez, who died on Monday at the age of 94, was stripped of her quiet existence in the north-eastern Spanish town of Borja, and recast as the well-meaning and unwitting creator of what would become known around the English-speaking world as Monkey Christ. In Spain, the meme phenomenon was dubbed Ecce Mono (Behold the Monkey), a play on the painting’s Latin title Ecce Homo (Behold the Man).

For weeks, months and even years, the side-by-side images of Elías García Martínez’s original and Giménez’s unfinished restoration went viral globally, becoming shorthand for bungled efforts and disastrous outcomes.

There was, however, more to that summer’s events in Borja’s Santuario de Misericordia than the initial reports – including my own – suggested. Giménez, who was married in the church, had already spent two decades tending to the fresco, trying to protect it against the ravages of time and water damage. She was also only midway through her restoration, and had headed off on a two-week holiday when news of Monkey Christ started........

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