Michelangelo to Banksy: The controversial artworks that fell foul of the legislation

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On reflection, Michelangelo’s fresco bought off quite flippantly. Not lengthy after Volterra started preserving the modesty of figures in The Final Judgment with strategically positioned material, Protestant iconoclasts swept via the Low Nations in 1566 and attacked Antwerp’s cathedral, completely mutilating a grand altarpiece by Frans Floris, town’s main artist. Floris’s fantastical Fall of the Insurgent Angels, painted simply 12 years earlier, depicts a saint casting out a swarm of grotesque demons. Reformers, satisfied that the triptych’s imagery violated new civic legal guidelines towards superstition and idolatry, ripped the wings from the work’s hinges and destroyed its two aspect panels. Solely the central part of the triptych, comparatively freed from the offending iconography, survived the demolition. When Catholic rule returned 20 years later, the salvaged fragment was rehung within the cathedral, an emblem of artwork’s exceptional resilience.

A strong erasure

Not each work punished for its alleged violation of legislation has suffered irreparable injury. In 1815, Francisco de Goya’s well-known pair of work depicting the identical reclining lady in mirroring poses – one nude, the opposite clothed – was seized by the Inquisition and sequestered for many years, although neither was in the end broken nor destroyed. The works, generally known as The Two Majas, had been painted between 1797 and 1800 and are revolutionary of their sensual portrayal of a up to date lady gazing immediately on the viewer, unconnected to any fable or narrative from historical past or faith.

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After the works’ proprietor, the Spanish Prime Minister Manuel Godoy (who stored the canvases in a cupboard with different nude work), was overthrown in 1808, an investigation was opened into his possession of the scandalous portraits, which had been accused of breaking legal guidelines of decency and public morality. Goya was summoned to clarify himself, although the report of his defence has not survived. Whereas Goya, who held a excessive place as courtroom painter, doesn’t appear to have been punished, his works had been confiscated and stored from public view till 1836 and ultimately transferred to the Prado Museum in 1901.