Michelangelo to Banksy: The controversial artworks that fell foul of the law - and were erased
Prefiguring Banksy's latest Royal Courts of Justice mural depicting a judge attacking a protester, are centuries of art history where works have been censored or edited.
It could hardly be more brutal in its depiction of the administration of judicial might: a judge, arm raised, wielding a makeshift weapon, delivers his ruling, blow by blow, on the body of the accused, who lies at his feet. No, I'm not talking about Banksy's recent (and rapidly erased) mural, which the street artist sprayed onto the side of the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 7 September. Banksy's work, which satirically depicted an English judge in traditional wig and gown, pummelling a prone protester with his gavel as splatters of blood became the very message emblazoned on the blank placard that the protester carried, was partially eradicated by authorities three days later.
Prefiguring Banksy's work by more than four-and-a-half centuries is a marble sculpture by the Renaissance artist Jean de Boulogne (known as "Giambologna") which portrays a scene from the Bible in which the Old Testament judge Samson "slew a thousand men" with the "jawbone of an ass".
If Banksy's controversial work calls to mind such potent precedents from the history of art, so too does his mural's fate. Almost as quickly as the work was discovered on the side of the Queen's building in the court complex, it was covered up by large sheets of black plastic and barricaded by steel barriers and guards from the HM Courts & Tribunals Service. The Metropolitan Police quickly confirmed that the work had been "reported to them as criminal damage", allegedly in violation, it seems, of the Criminal Damage Act of 1971.
The diminishment (if not complete destruction) of Banksy's mural, a grey ghost of which still haunts the wall on which it was initially stencilled, is hardly the first time a work of art has been censored after falling foul of the law. The whole history of image-making is punctuated by episodes of restricted viewing and suppressed expression. From the smashing of icons in 8th and 9th-Century Byzantium to the destruction of Banksy's acerbic satire on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice this week, the story of art is one routinely copy-edited by the powers that be.
Take Michelangelo's formidable fresco, The Last Judgment, which occupies the entire altar wall of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. Completed in 1541, the famous work imagines the dynamic rise and fall of redeemed and damned souls as they are conveyed to heaven and hell following the Second Coming of Christ. Though it may be difficult to conceive of a less erotic subject than the bustle of bare bodies jostling for their position in eternity, The Last Judgment was nevertheless found to be on the wrong side of the Council of Trent's decision in December 1563 to prohibit works of art that were "adorned with beauty exciting to lust". From its first unveiling, Michelangelo's nudes had provoked criticism by those who felt their presence "in so sacred a place" was indecent. Particular scrutiny fell on the portrayal, in the bottom right section of the fresco, of a naked St Catherine of Alexandria who appears to twerk away from St Blaise as he leans over her – his body pressed close to hers.
In order to make Michelangelo's masterpiece comply with the new edict banning "lasciviousness" in art, the Italian Mannerist Daniele da Volterra was hired to fit the fresco's naked figures with loincloths and vestments, earning him the nickname "Il Braghettone", or "the breeches maker". The result is a deft disfigurement of Michelangelo's original vision. While modern-day restorations of the fresco undertaken in the 1980s and 90s succeeded in removing further embellishments that had been added after Volterra's 16th-Century "corrections", the majority of his interventions remain in place to this day.
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