The Spanish fresco lady is back. She once painted a circle of hair round a 19th-century face of Jesus, and now she’s completing a circle as old as time itself: sweetly idiosyncratic happening -> internet meme -> hard cash.
According to @glynmoody on a blog at Techdirt.com (via @sinkdeep) she has recruited lawyers and is planning to claim copyright on her work, asking for a cut from the collection box that the church positioned under the fresco since it started taking off on the internet.
The picture became an instant internet hit after the eighty-year-old woman ineptly restored the 19th century fresco, with results that were described by the BBC’s Europe correspondent as “a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic”. The attention soon recruited horde of visitors to the Spanish church, which has apparently been trying to cash in through its collection box. But that money belongs to the artist! She’s taking it back.
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