A VANDALISED statue sculpted by a controversial artist who made his home at a former Black Mountains monastery has been restored and reinstalled above the entrance to the BBC's Broadcasting House in London.

Eric Gill, who set up an artists’ commune at Capel-y-ffin near Llanthony 100 years ago, was recognised as one of the greatest arts craftsmen and typographers of the 20th Century.

But his reputation was damaged by revelations in a 1989 biography that he had kept diaries detailing his sexual abuse of his own daughters and other incestuous relationships.

Gill's Grade II-listed Prospero and Ariel statue from Shakespeare's The Tempest was attacked by a member of the public armed with a chisel in 2022 and 2023, causing damage worth more than £150,000.

There had previously been calls to remove the 1930s sculpture, but last week the BBC reinstalled the restored statue behind a protective screen at a cost of more than £527,000.

It has been displayed with a QR code outlining the history of the building, Eric Gill and the sculpture's restoration.

A BBC spokesperson told BBC News the corporation "in no way condones Gill's abusive behaviour" but that it "draws a line between the actions of Gill, and the status of these artworks".

Historic England CEO Duncan Wilson, who worked on the project with the BBC, added: "We recognise that since details of Gill's abusive behaviours came to light in the late 1980s, he has understandably become a controversial character.

"We welcome the BBC's approach to repairing the sculpture and providing interpretation which explores this complex history.

"This is in line with our approach of encouraging thoughtful, long-lasting and powerful (re)interpretation of contested statues and sites which keeps their physical context but adds new layers of meaning and understanding."

A man has denied causing damage to the artwork and is due to face trial later this year.

Gill, who died in 1940, also has a series of major religious artworks in Westminster Cathedral, where he was commissioned from 1911-14 to create the 14 Stations of the Cross.

Abuse survivors and other campaigners have recently demanded they "be ripped from the walls" of the Catholic cathedral.

But a spokesman for the cathedral said in 2022: "While it goes without saying that Eric Gill’s sexual behaviour was morally totally unacceptable and remains shocking and deeply offensive to all, a distinction needs to be kept between the work of art and the artist who created it."

Gill moved with his family to Capel-y-ffin to live in the disused Llanthony Abbey monastery in 1924, and in a four-year stay set up an artists' commune and produced several major works of art there, including the sculptures The Sleeping Christ (1925), Deposition (1925) and Mankind (1927).

He also created engravings for a series of books published by the Golden Cockerel Press considered among the finest of their kind,

But perhaps most famously, he designed the typeface Gill Sans (1927) there, which is considered one of the most successful typefaces ever designed and which remains in widespread use.