 Conservators, or art restores, are considered the magicians of the art world. Over the course of time, paintings are bound to lose their original color, suffer damage and fade, and thanks to highly skilled conservators, we are able to restore these pieces back to their original glory. But sometimes, very rarely, these beautiful pieces get ruined by someone and the damage is irreversible. 17. Worst Art Restoration Fails 17. Just a Light Dusting 1481 was the year the Sistine Chapel was completed, with its walls boasting artwork from the most renowned Renaissance painters of the time. Further down the line, more painters added their work to the chapel in these days, five million people visit the chapel yearly. In the 1980s and 1990s, the chapel underwent extensive restoration. Many critics believe it was not done successfully, due to a build-up of soot and city dirt that had entered the chapel, the top layers of the frescoes were covered in a thin layer of the dirt. Restores had to remove this, but they did such a shoddy job that many characters lost their eyes in the process. There's a lot of people saying the Vatican was ruined after this massive restoration. 16. Comedy of Errors We head to the Cairo Museum and take a look at the Hodgpodge job that was done to reattach the beard on the burial mask of Tutankhamon. A maintenance team were tasked at replacing the light bulb inside the case where this priceless piece was kept. And while doing so, they somehow managed to break off the blue and gold-brated beard. Bear in mind, this statue was around 3300 years old. Five curators were told they needed to repair it and they speedily used epoxy glue to do so. This seemed to infuriate a number of people who were horrified that something that should be used on a teapot was used to fix this priceless piece and they added the damage was irreversible. 15. Now you see it, now you don't. There was once and original Leonardo Da Vinci sketch depicting Orpheus being attacked by the furies valued at millions. When the piece went in for restoration, the person doing the job tried to loosen the work using water and alcohol. This caused a chemical reaction which made the entire sketch disappear. The damage could not be repaired and that sketch has been lost forever. 14. But is it art? This botched art job made international headlines for all the wrong reasons. Chaoyang's Yun Ji temple was home to 300-year-old murals painted on the temple walls. A company was brought into a store, the original artwork, and what was left was something reminiscent of a Disney movie. The company was unqualified. No quotes were sent through and the guys were given the go-ahead without consulting anyone. Those that gave the permission were fired but that doesn't bring back the original artwork in that bit of history is gone forever. 13. A Temporary Fix Over in Sudbury in Ontario, someone stole the head off of a statue of the baby Jesus. The cost of replacing the statue would have been $10,000 Canadian dollars. So the statue remained just like that. Headless. That was until a local artist decided to do something about it. The head is made from orange clay and although it was only meant to be temporary, some people were rather offended. It does look pretty funny but by now we're sure the head has been replaced with a proper stone one. 12. Keeping Up with the Times We wonder if you might have spotted this because we doubt we would have. Some are calling it a serious misinterpretation of the original. As Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous painting has been slightly altered, the last separate original painting features Jesus' red tunic sleeve hanging behind the tabletop. When it was restored between 1978 and 1999, the cuff was on top of the table and not just behind it. This has left the art world up in arms and unsure of how to move forward. 11. Before and After Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had a statue of Mars and Venus, circa 175 AD placed in front of his home. The statues had a few missing parts, so Berlusconi requested they be restored. They turned out all right, but there were many critics who were exceptionally unhappy with the changes. As they said, they had no idea how it looked originally, so the former Prime Minister had them return to their initial, limeless state. 10. A Minor Touch Up Perhaps the Louvre Museum in Paris is just moving with the Times, but so far a woman featured on a 16th century masterpiece has received two nose jobs. The painting is the supper at Emmaus, painted by Véronese in the 1550s. After the first restoration, the woman had what they called a mutilated nose tip that hovers disconnectively over an anatomical void. Another attempt at restoration saw her with very wide nostrils and larger than normal lips. Apparently, the museum hasn't owned up to the second restoration, although photographic evidence proved that it did indeed happen. 9. Tree of Life Or you can call it the Tree of Fertility. This is a 746-year-old fresco that was found in an Italian cave. It shows a tree with branches, and on the end of the branches are very real-looking appendages. Under the tree are a group of women just waiting for them to fall, like ripe fruit. It's really bizarre. When a team went in to restore the artwork, they took it upon themselves to remove some of these appendages. The colors were said to be brilliant, but the restores have made the painting lose its impact. Headlines in Italy in the local papers read, Restoration castrates the tree of fertility. The people who worked on it claimed it was damaged already, and they did everything in their power to restore it perfectly. 8. Time for a Makeover Over in Turkey, they're having a problem with a botched restoration job, too. This time, on some ancient Roman mosaics, the mosaics were meant to be cleaned so they could be moved to another museum, and what was left was almost unrecognizable. Wrong colors, wrong shapes, and even missing tiles. An investigation was being conducted as to whom was responsible for the atrocity, included in the damaged goods are a mosaic showing the sacrifice of Isaac and one of Narcissus. 7. Leave It to the Experts Imagine a restoration being the reason that people quit their jobs. That's what happened when experts saw this restoration of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. This painting was done by Leonardo da Vinci and some experts quit their jobs in protest when they saw this version. As clearly seen, the painting is vastly lighter as if this scenario took place on a sunny day. These experts claimed that this is in complete contrast to Da Vinci's vision, although how would we really know what was going through his head at the time of the painting of this masterpiece? 6. A Wider Shade of Pale There are very few portraits of Shakespeare in the world, and two were irreversibly ruined. The team in charge of restoring the painting assumed they were removing an outer layer of paint to reveal the original paintings underneath. Turns out, they ended up wiping away the original artwork. It's believed the paintings were altered during Shakespeare's lifetime and that the artists back then did it to purposefully show how he had aged. So when the top layer was removed, underneath was a younger looking Shakespeare. Currently, the National Portrait Gallery is deciding whether or not to clean up one of their portraits of Shakespeare which hasn't been touched in over 400 years. 5. Not Your Best Look Head on over to Russia and you'll find quite a large number of lemon statues around, but none, quite like this one. In Crasnodar-Kry, one such statue underwent a bit of restoration. It turned out like a monkey, honestly, and remained that way until photos circulated online in 2016, and only after that was he given a makeover to return him to his former self. A change is as good as a holiday. You would think that taking something that is already in ruins and giving it a makeover would automatically improve it, but not in this case. Not a piece of art, per se, but the El Castillo de Matrera is an historical castle from 9th century Spain. This national monument was damaged by intense rain in 2013, so a project was undertaken to restore it. The end result looks like the original bricks have been stuck on a gray concrete building. It was called a heritage massacre, and many people were left deeply shocked by the outcome. Although, ironically, the building was nominated for an Arquitzer A-plus award, and actually won the people's choice. 3. Quite the Artist A restoration project that made headlines globally took place in a 16th-century Spanish church, and the artist in question was Cecilia Jimenez. The 81-year-old lady quickly received the nickname Eche Mano, which means behold the monkey, because she transformed a 19th-century fresco of Jesus into something closely resembling a monkey. She thought she was doing the church a favor, and initially it was anything but. However, give it a bit of time, and she ended up doing the sleepy town a huge favor. Missouri Cordia has received thousands of visitors through their doors, all hoping to catch a glimpse of her artwork, and they've all left wonderful donations, very much needed by the church. 2. Worlds Worst The restoration of the Great Wall of China has been called the World's Worst Restoration. Although after seeing our previous century, it's quite possible this restoration project has lost its number one spot. It's no secret that the Great Wall of China is slowly decaying, and a number of years ago a task team set out to reconstruct a certain section of it, which they did, using concrete. The Chinese slammed this terrible job online, and many promises were made to ensure nothing like that ever happened again. 1. More often, they just get it right. After seeing all the disastrous efforts of restoration, let's have a look at one that is mind-blowingly amazing. The adoration of the shepherds by the Italian Renaissance master Sebastiano del Piamo was in total ruins. It really looked like there was no hope for it. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge commissioned this restoration and it took them 10 years to complete. The painting dates back to 1511, and if you see it today, it would be hard to imagine it, as this old painting that almost didn't make it.