Tracing the Origin
of Censorship in
Visual Art History
HISTORY Dinesh Khemani
The discipline of Art History attributes Raja Ravi Varma
as the first Indian modernist painter. With the colonial rule
gradually extending its wings to the sub-continent the notion of
an individual artist was born. Meanwhile the West had already
acknowledged the role of an artist in the society. The Age of
Renaissance preceded by the Medieval Ages or ‘Dark Ages’(as
described by some) was the rebirth of art, literature, philosophy,
scientific invention and poetry. The artists were commissioned
by the Pope of the Church in order to render tales from the
Bible and spread the word of God to humans. What makes it
more interesting is the fact that these artists after being trained
as apprentices would take on the task of painting and sculpting
tales from the Gospel and make it their own. There was a
humanistic touch in these paintings portraying holy men as
ordinary people caught in conflict, rage and passion. The names
that spring up immediately when one mentions Renaissance
are Giotto, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. One must
not forget that censorship took a more instutionalised form
during this era. Michelangelo being assigned the herculean
task of adorning the Vatican with these spiritual images, it
has startled the world with its sheer passion of emotion and
grandeur. The Sistine chapel ceiling houses more than 300
figures that represent the history of mankind from creation to
the birth of Christ. Although it has been known that all these
artists did receive a lot of appreciation and recognition in
their time not much has been written about the criticism they
had to encounter, especially with the authoritative orthodoxy
ruling at that time in Rome. Michelangelo was attacked and
brutally criticised for ‘exposition of genitals’ of nude figures in
The Last Judgment. This painting created a lot of furore and
dispute between the Cardinal Carafa and Michelangelo. He was
accused of ‘immorality’ and ‘intolerable obscenity’ by those
controlling the Church for vulgar representation of these pious
Biblical men. This criticism was echoed by Biagio Cardinal da
Cesena(Master of Ceremonies of Popes) who described the
fresco as “a stew of nudes … better suited to a bathhouse or
roadside wine shop than the Pope’s chapel.”