Don’t believe your lying eyes. The Cristiano Ronaldo airport statue isn’t as bad as it seems.
That’s the argument of Emanuel Santos, the sculptor who made the bronze bust of the soccer superstar that now sits at the Cristiano Ronaldo Airport in Funchal, Madeira. Santos defended his widely panned piece of art Wednesday and explained to Brazil’s Globo TV on Wednesday how he made it over the course of three weeks.
“It is impossible to please the Greeks and Trojans,” Santos said, per The Guardian. “Neither did Jesus please everyone. This is a matter of taste, so it is not as simple as it seems. What matters is the impact that this work generated. There is always the possibility of making a difference, I was prepared for all this. I used as a base some photos of Cristiano Ronaldo that I found on the internet, nothing specific. I put the photos next to me and started working on the bust.”
Ronaldo approved of the bronze bust before its unveiling and only asked Santos to make slight changes so he would appear younger.
“Cristiano saw the photos that his brother sent him,” Santos continued. “I was with the brother at Cristiano’s museum in Madeira and from the messages he sent, I could tell that he liked what he saw. He only asked for some wrinkles that give him a certain expression in his face when he’s about to laugh to be changed. He said it made him look older and asked for it to be thinned out a bit to make it smoother and more jovial. But they gave it the go-ahead; they liked what they saw.”
The internet roundly criticized the Ronaldo airport statue, with some social media users immediately turning it into the hot meme of the moment.
Thumbnail photo via Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports Images
