Let Us All Praise This Magnificently Cooked Attempt To Restore A Baby Jesus Statue

Jesus Christ has had a long and varied representation in the canon of Western art history. Works like Da Vinci’s Last Supper and Caravaggio’s The Crowning With Thorns have remained iconic for more than six centuries. Christ the Redeemer, which gazes lovingly over Rio de Janeiro, has inspired millions. Modern works like Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ have caused outrage and challenged the sanctity of religion in the art world.

But no depiction has ever quite rivalled the majesty or provocation of Cecilia Giménez’s Ecco Homo 2.0 — the confused grimacing monkey an elderly woman drew in a panic over an old Christ fresco she ruined outside a Spanish church.

Until now.

Heather Wise, a local artist from the small Canadian town of Sudbury, has offered a local Catholic church a new version of Jesus’s head to complete one of their vandalised sculptures. The work has been missing the head for about a year now and, since the church didn’t have the money to properly restore the piece, her contribution was received with open arms.

“My feelings were hurt when I saw it, because I thought ‘who would do that?'” Wise told the local news. “It’s just not a positive feeling to see that. I said ‘I’m an artist, I would like to fix it.’ I knocked on the door, talked to the priest and we’ve been getting this together… To do a statue of baby Jesus for a church is like an honour of my entire art career.”

However, some locals and parishioners haven’t taken it quite as well. For some reason they would have preferred the head to be made ~from stone~ instead of bright orange clay, and resemble ~their lord and saviour~ rather than a mutant cross between Maggie Simpson and Rick from Rick and Morty. Can’t please anyone these days.

In the artist’s defence, the head was only ever meant to be temporary. She’s never worked with stone before so will be training up before having proper go at it next year.

For the moment though, the local priest is left dealing with a bunch of whinging people in his front yard. “It’s a first try. It’s a first go,” he told the Canada Broadcasting Corporation. “I wasn’t trained for this in seminary.”