page_title: Scandals in art
section_title: 17th century
hierarchical_section_title: Scandals in art / History / 17th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A self-produced, colourised version of this destroyed, no longer existing work, as only black and white photographs previously existed as reference.
context_page_description: Scandals in art occur when members of the public are shocked or offended by a work of art at the time of its first exhibition or publication.
  The provocativeness of the scandal may relate to a controversial subject or style, being context-sensitive, according to the personality of the artist, along with transient political, religious, social, and moral factors. The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet seems innocuous today, but the large size of a painting, generally reserved for religious and mythological subjects, depicting the rural poor was seen by the upper class as an endorsement of the type of grievances that had erupted in the revolutionary violence of 1848, just 9 years earlier.
  In contrast, the 90 cans of Artist's Shit, each labeled as containing 30 grams of feces of the artist Piero Manzoni, were regarded as social commentary rather than scandal; collectors began buying the cans and they soon fetched high prices at auction; in August 2016, at an auction in Milan, can #69 sold for €275,000, including auction fees.
context_section_description: Many of Caravaggio's works were rejected by his patrons, judged as being too vulgar, scandalous, like the first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel (1602). The canons of the Contarelli Chapel were appalled by the dirty legs and arms, minutely reproduced from the peasant model, and the ambiguity of the angel his side. The painting was passed over, and Caravaggio was made to do a second that conformed better to the idealized representation preferred by the churchmen, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Caravaggio created a stir by his provocative Conversion of Saint Paul, with its prominent portrayal of the rump of the horse, who is poised to trample the saint. The Death of the Virgin (1606), intended for the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere, Rome, was rejected as blasphemous.
caption: Saint Matthew and the Angel (1602) was refused for its triviality, the realism of the saint, and the ambiguity of the angel (original painting destroyed during World War II).
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