An amateur 'restored' a 500-year-old statue of one of Christianity's most important saints — and it looks terrible

• A statue of St. George has been in the Church of St. Michael in Estella, Spain for 500 years.
• An amateur local "restored" it with the permission of the parish, but without asking experts.
• It looks awful — and it's drawing comparisons to the botched 2012 restoration of "Ecce Homo."

For 500 years, a wooden statue of St. George has held dominion at the Church of St. Michael in Estella, Spain.

Without consulting the town's government or art restoration experts, the local parish decided it needed restoration. They apparently recruited a local crafts teacher to do it, according to The Guardian.

George was transformed from a knight struggling to slay a dragon to someone who looks more like a depressed, slightly shocked teen.

"It's not been the kind of restoration that it should have been for this 16th-century statue. They’ve used plaster and the wrong kind of paint and it's possible that the original layers of paint have been lost," Estella's mayor Koldo Leoz, told The Guardian. "This is an expert job it should have been done by experts."

The botched job is drawing comparisons to Ecce Homo, a Spanish mural of Jesus Christ. A local amateur attempted to restore it in 2012, but it drew widespread mockery and was dubbed "monkey Christ." A local newspaper called the St. George restoration "Navarre's Ecce Homo," referring to the Spanish region of Navarro.

Ecce Homo wasn't a total disaster, though. It turned the Sanctuary of Mercy in the small village of Borja, Spain, into a major tourist attraction.

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