Holy offence? ... 15th-century wooden sculpture of Christ on the cross. Photograph: Carlo Ferraro/EPA
At Easter thoughts turn to... chocolate. But seldom in this secularised society to Christ crucified. This Easter the two came together in the typical "outrageous artist" story of Cosimo Cavallaro's My Sweet Lord. Nicely covered in David Bennum's blog, it tells of the six-foot high chocolate cast of Christ in the crucifixion pose, which was to have been exhibited in the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, until the Catholic League got their teeth into the matter.
Much of the fuss came to centre on the nudity of Christ, not the eccentric medium. The idea that Christ's genitals should be visible was seen as offensive by ardent Catholics. They stand in a long and dishonourable tradition.
At least with respect to the nudity of his Christ, Cavallaro is in good company. The marble statue that Michelangelo delivered in 1525 to his patrons in Rome followed the stipulation in the contract, which specified "a marble figure of Christ as large as life, naked".
Michelangelo's was one of numerous naked Christs in the Renaissance, many infants but not exclusively so. In 1983 Leo Steinberg devoted a whole book to the subject, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion.
The divine penises of the infant Jesus not infrequently receive direct attention from his mother, St Anne, kings and even donors. The rationale is that the divine has become incarnate, made flesh in every human particular.
Even more remarkable are images of Christ as Man of Sorrows with an undeniable erection under his loincloth. Erections are not uncommon in executions by hanging but their attribution to the resurrected Christ is presumably a literal demonstration of his body having cheated death in the most virile fashion.
However, even in Michelangelo's time, the storm clouds of populist prudery were gathering. The Dominicans of S Maria sopra Minerva decreed that a loincloth should be added to hide Christ's shameful nudity - together with a bronze shoe to protect his right foot from zealous kissers. It was in this censorious spirit that the Michelangelo's nude figures in his Last Judgement were endowed with Daniele da Volterra's "breeches".
When the statue was restored the additions were removed. But on a recent visit to Rome, to see if it might be possible to borrow the discarded loincloth for the exhibition on representations of sex that we are organising for the Barbican Gallery, I found that a newer swathe of bronze drapery had been added. Crossing only his right thigh, it hangs in defiance of gravity between his legs.
There is something risible about the little swathes of fluttering drapery that have been used to conceal the fact that Christ was all man. Dud and Pete speculated in one of their dialogues that the storerooms of our museums are full of pictures in which the wind was blowing in the other direction. The objections to the genitals of the chocolate Christ belong in this comic context.
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