Fresco artist Cecilia Gimenez wants royalties for revealing true face of Jesus (but not his wife)
CECILIA Gimenez, the famous Spanish artist, wants money for her rendering of Jesus.
El Correo reports that Spain’s most noteworthy living artist wants due credit for her updating of Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), the fresco now known as Ecce Mono, or Behold the Monkey.
Many come to gaze at the work but only a few are leaving tips. And what money there is – the Santi Spiritus Hospital Foundation, reportedly, reaped $2,600 in four days from visitors – is not reaching the struggling artist. And then there are the royalties for use of her work in the media.
Agence France-Presse says 180,000 people have signed a petition calling on the work to remain as it is and not revert to something approaching the original.
How can Gimenez make money? What about giving the world a face for Jesus’s wife?
Karen L. King, a historian at Harvard Divinity School, says early Coptic Christian thought Jesus was married. She’s read a papyrus. And it, according to her, is the “only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century.”
A Harvard press release adds.
“King and colleague AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University, believe that the fragment is part of a newly discovered gospel.”
If Jesus had a wife, chances are she had a face.
Jim West, a professor and Baptist pastor in Tennessee, said, with no irony at all:
“A statement on a papyrus fragment isn’t proof of anything. It’s nothing more than a statement ‘in thin air’, without substantial context.”
To make something stick you need to give it a look. Over to you Cecilia…
Posted: 20th, September 2012 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
