The Most Controversial Paintings in Art History
The most controversial paintings in history got their painters sued, summoned by the Inquisition, or attacked in the press by Charles Dickens. Twelve scandals, from a nude that needed guards to a trial over a pot of paint.
The charges, in short
One painting required guards to protect it from canes and umbrellas.
One got its owner summoned before the Spanish Inquisition.
One triggered a libel trial over the price of two days of work.
One was called blasphemous by the most famous novelist alive.
And one was so shocking that the painter’s own friends thought he had lost his mind.
1 | Olympia, Edouard Manet (1865)
A nude who stares back. Paris had seen a thousand painted Venuses, but this one was plainly a working woman, unashamed, with a client’s bouquet arriving.
The Salon hung it high out of reach and posted guards after visitors attacked it with canes. The scandal machine himself is in my guide to Edouard Manet.
2 | The Nude Maja, Francisco Goya (about 1800)
A life size nude with no goddess alibi at all. It hung in a private cabinet of the minister Godoy, behind a clothed version rigged to swing aside.
In 1815 the Inquisition summoned Goya to explain it. His answers are lost. The painter who survived kings, war and the Holy Office is in my guide to Francisco Goya.
3 | The Last Judgment, Michelangelo (1541)
Hundreds of nudes over the Sistine altar, saints included. The Vatican’s master of ceremonies called it fit for a bathhouse, so Michelangelo painted him in hell with donkey ears.
After the painter died, the Church hired Daniele da Volterra to paint loincloths over the offending anatomy. Rome nicknamed him the breeches maker. The man who fought popes for decades is in my guide to Michelangelo.
4 | The Origin of the World, Gustave Courbet (1866)
The most direct nude ever painted, commissioned by an Ottoman diplomat for his private collection. It stayed hidden for over a century, at one point behind a sliding panel owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
The Musee d’Orsay finally hung it in 1995, and it still triggers censorship fights on social platforms today. The provocateur is in my guide to Gustave Courbet.
5 | Madame X, John Singer Sargent (1884)
One fallen shoulder strap on a society beauty. That was enough: the 1884 Salon laughed, the sitter’s mother begged for the painting’s removal, and the model’s reputation never recovered.
Sargent repainted the strap upright and left Paris for London. He later called it the best thing he had done. I tell the whole affair in Madame X, the scandal.
6 | Nocturne in Black and Gold, James McNeill Whistler (1875)
Fireworks over a London pleasure garden, painted as falling sparks in fog. The critic John Ruskin accused Whistler of flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
Whistler sued for libel and won a farthing, one quarter of a penny, and went bankrupt on legal costs. The trial that put modern art in the witness box is in my guide to Whistler.
7 | Christ in the House of His Parents, John Everett Millais (1850)
The Holy Family as a real carpenter’s household: wood shavings, dirty feet, a worried mother. Victorian England gagged.
Charles Dickens led the charge, describing the young Christ as a hideous, blubbering boy and the scene as blasphemous. Queen Victoria asked to see the painting privately to judge for herself.
8 | Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet (1872)
A hazy harbor at dawn that a mocking critic dismissed as mere impression, less finished than wallpaper. The insult became the name of the movement.
Impressionism was baptized by its worst review. The man who painted the sunrise is in my guide to Claude Monet.
9 | Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Pablo Picasso (1907)
Five fractured figures from a Barcelona brothel street, faces borrowed from Iberian and African masks. Even Picasso’s allies recoiled: Matisse was furious, and one friend predicted Picasso would hang himself behind the canvas.
He rolled it up and kept it in the studio for nine years. What Picasso did to the women in his life, on canvas and off, is in How Picasso Destroyed the 6 Women Who Loved Him.
10 | The Holy Virgin Mary, Chris Ofili (1996)
A Black Madonna with a lump of elephant dung as one breast, shown in Brooklyn in 1999. New York’s mayor Rudy Giuliani called it sick and tried to cut the museum’s funding.
The museum won in court. Ofili, a practicing Catholic, said the dung was a symbol of fertility, and the painting later sold for 4.6 million dollars.
11 | Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo (sold 2017)
The controversy here is the label. Bought for around 1,000 dollars in 2005, restored, attributed to Leonardo and sold for 450.3 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting.
Many scholars see the workshop’s hand rather than the master’s, and the painting has not been publicly exhibited since the sale. The attribution war is part of my guide to Leonardo da Vinci.
12 | Therese Dreaming, Balthus (1938)
In 2017, a petition asked the Met to remove or recontextualize this painting of a young girl, arguing it romanticizes the sexualization of a child. Over 11,000 people signed.
The Met kept it on view, arguing that art must be allowed to provoke discussion. The debate over where the line sits has not moved an inch since.
Scandal, the questions that keep coming
What is the most controversial painting ever? By volume of outrage across centuries, Olympia and the Last Judgment share the crown.
Why was Olympia so shocking? Her stare. Painted nudes were supposed to be goddesses looking away, and Olympia looked at the buyer.
Did the Inquisition really question Goya? Yes, in 1815, over the Nude Maja. The record of his defense has not survived.
What happened in the Whistler trial? Whistler won his libel case against Ruskin but was awarded a farthing, and the costs ruined him.
Is Salvator Mundi really by Leonardo? Disputed. Several specialists credit the workshop, and the painting has stayed out of public view since its 450 million dollar sale.
One closing fact: when the Church ordered loincloths for the Last Judgment in 1565, it chose Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo’s own friend. Restorers in the 1990s kept most of his breeches: the censorship is now part of the painting.