FRAZETTA'S EERIE NO. 5 COVER PAINTING RESTORED

Occasionally the news will run a story about a famous painting being found that has been overpainted with another, or by another artist entirely.  My sister came across this interesting piece from Rob Pitstella's gallery at the Comic Art Fans site.

After being published as the cover to Warren's EERIE #5 (illustrating "The Swamp God" story), Frank Frazetta later covered over the two men shown with the intention of adding one of his famous ladies. Well, he never got around to it, and Mr. Pistella decided to have an art restoration company remove the overpaint and restore it to its original grandeur.

Mr. Pistella explains:

I had a professional old master oil restoration house in NYC remove the one layer of paint that Frank had covered the figures with years ago, when he intended to add a girl into this painting, but never did. Frank had mentioned to me it was a mistake to take out the two men since he never got around to putting the girl in, and couldn't do it right at the end of his career. In a moment of clarity, I thought to see if it could be restored to it's original glory...since this is done all the time with very old paintings that have been overpainted. The restoration house used the original Eerie cover as a guide, and said it wasn't such a big job, since they weren't working blind. This is the wonderful result-- the cover to Eerie 5 as it was originally painted! See the pre-restoration version elsewhere in my gallery. They also removed the yellowing varnish and revarnished it, brightening up the piece tremendously!!

BONUS: "The Swamp God", from EERIE #5.