Cecilia Giménez (died December 29th 2025, aged 94) was a resident of Borja, in Aragon, who became world-famous for her amateur restoration of the "Ecce Homo", a painting of Christ in his crown of thorns on a pillar in the Santuario de la Misericordia, her parish church in northern Spain.
Giménez was a widow who worked in a bar to support herself. She had two sons, both born with disabilities: Jesús, who had muscular dystrophy and died at 20, and José, who had cerebral palsy and still required her full care into his 60s. She volunteered at the Santuario de la Misericordia, a church at the top of a hill reached through vineyards in Borja, where she had been married and where her sons received their First Communion.
Beyond housework, she was a painter, primarily of flowers. She had little experience with portraits.
The original painting was done in 1930 by Elías García Martínez, who spent his summers in Borja and left it as a gift. Because he had not primed the stone, salt and damp from the aquifer beneath the church caused the oil paint to flake away over the decades.
In August 2012 Giménez set about repainting it. She had touched the work up before; the priest knew, and nobody stopped her. After repainting the tunic, she wet the whole surface with broad strokes and then left on a two-week holiday before finishing the face. While she was away, the Borja Studies Centre and the artist's family raised the alarm, and the half-finished portrait — with its slit eyes, greenish flat face and shaggy hood of hair — spread across the internet.
The image was dubbed "Monkey Jesus" and "Ecce Mono" (Behold the Monkey). Memes proliferated by the thousand: her Jesus-face was superimposed on the Mona Lisa, on Munch's "The Scream", and morphed into Homer Simpson and Mr Bean. Giménez was mocked relentlessly online. She lost six kilos, and was felled by panic and anxiety.
A reversal followed. Visitors began streaming into Borja to see the painting. In the first year 40,000 came; in subsequent years the figure settled at 15,000–20,000, compared with a pre-incident norm of around 5,000. The church charged one euro for entry at first, later raising it to three, and set up a shop selling "Ecce Homo" t-shirts, mugs, pencils, fridge magnets, flash drives and wine. The revenue helped both the Santuario and the Sancti Spiritus Hospital for impoverished elderly folk.
Half the profits from the shop went to Giménez; whatever money she did not need she gave to muscular-dystrophy charities. There was talk of naming a square after her. The shop doubled as an Interpretation Centre that took her "Ecce Homo" seriously. Art critics began to reassess the work: some found its simplicity moving, the work of a devoted believer; others compared her to Goya, Modigliani and the German Expressionists. She had shows, and prices for her paintings rose into thousands of euros.
Even the original artist's family came eventually to accept that Giménez's version should stay, given its importance to Borja.
Nihilism should commence with oneself.