One of the oldest statues in Budapest, the Suffering Jesus is now available for public view following a restoration project.
Originally, the piece was erected in the Városmajor area of the city in 1725 and was taken down for restoration a few months ago. A student from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Borbála Noémi Gheorghita, was selected to undertake the complicated procedure of refurbishing the piece.
She carried out the task with the assistance of two of her tutors, Richárd Káldi and Balázs Szemerey-Kiss. As they discovered, Christ’s shroud was originally red, while his hair and body was colored in later.
“I enjoyed working on this statue. It was a great challenge. There weren’t that many missing parts, but we had to replace his nose - I suspect some vandals were involved - as well as a broken toe on the left foot. I reconstructed these parts using mortar,” the young conservation professional said at the unveiling of the statue.
“In the olden days, maintenance work was carried out on public statues on a regular basis. It’s been forgotten how important it is to take care of public art pieces. Just like you have to paint a fence regularly, you have to keep your statues up-to-scratch,” added Gheorgita.
Photo source: Magyar Nemzet