New 'Restoration' Scandal in France
March 29 2022
Picture: france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has been emerging from Chatonrupt-Sommermont in the Haute-Marne, North-Eastern France, of a rather curious restoration scandal. The story revolves around a town Mayor who commissioned a retired soldier called Patrick Quercy to 'restore' a set of nineteenth-century Stations of the Cross. These rather damaged paintings had recently been rediscovered in the bell tower of an old church. Quercy's work had been featured on a regional news programme where several commentators spotted that the work was far from satisfactory (see the comparisons above). Didier Rykner of La Tribune de l'Art used words such as 'vandalism' and a 'massacre' to describe this most misguided campaign of restoration. He has also drawn attention to the vulnerable position that so many religious artworks of 'no commercial value' are placed in.
