The restorer, who died on Monday, brought unwanted attention to herself – and her small Spanish town. Then, slowly, a small miracle took place

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).

Sam Jones is Madrid correspondent for the Guardian

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