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

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Looking back, Michelangelo’s fresco went down quite lightly. Not long after Volterra began to maintain the humility of numbers at his final judgment with strategically placed drapes, the Protestant Iconoclast swept the low country in 1566, attacking the Cathedral of Antwerp, and forever cutting off the grand altarpiece by the city’s leading artist Frans Floris. Painted just 12 years ago, the fantastic fall of Floris’ rebels depicts a saint who presents a grotesque flock of demons. Convinced that the image of the Triptic violated the new civil law against superstition and idolatry, the reformers tore the wings from the work’s hinges and destroy two side panels. Only the central part of the triptic, where the iconography of crime is relatively unliberated, survived the demolition. When Catholic rule returned 20 years later, the rescued fragments were rehung in the cathedral.

A powerful elimination

Not all jobs punished for alleged violation of the law have been irreparable damage. In 1815, a pair of famous paintings by Francisco de Goya portrays the same reclining woman in a mirroring pose – one nude, the other dressed – was seized by interrogation and isolated for decades, but neither ultimately destroyed nor destroyed. The work, known as the Two Maja, was portrayed between 1797 and 1800, and is innovative in its sensual portrayal of modern women who look directly at viewers who are not associated with myths or stories from history or religion.

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After the work’s owner, Spanish Prime Minister Manuel Godoy (who kept the canvas on canvas along with other nude paintings), overthrown in 1808, an investigation was opened for possession of scandalous portraits. Goya was summoned to explain herself, but his record of defense has not survived. Although Goya, who had maintained a high position as a court painter, appears to have not been punished, his work was confiscated and protected from public places until 1836, and eventually transferred to the Prado Museum in 1901.