Mieke Bal in her book “ Quoting Caravaggio, Contemporary Art, Preposterous History” uses Caravaggio to draw parallels with today’s contemporary artists and she does that by starting from the comparison and evaluation of two non-European artists: Ana Mendieta and Andres Serrano. It is difficult to define today, four-hundred years later, the artist’s ideologies and spirituality but is is and interesting example and starting point for the exploration of Plate’s broader argument that blasphemy is only determined by the context. Attracted by the mysticism of the Saint, Caravaggio might have personally assisted to one of the many ecstasies that the Saint experienced). If it is true that Caravaggio only painted what he saw (and experienced) himself, then taking into account the nature (that is what is real and concrete) one may think that, to some extent Caravaggio may have been left incredulous in front of what he saw and that for this reason, many times and throughout his all existence, he staggered between faith, religious fanaticism and blasphemy (Caravaggio personally met San Felice Neri and it is a widely shared opinion that many of Caravaggio’s works show the influences of Neri’s sermons on art and artistic and personal ideologies of the Caravaggio’s. His Maddalena for example, could be identifiable with the starting point of an iconographic renewal of the theme of Christian ecstasy. On the contrary, he depicted his figures in a rather raw manner anf the characters appeared as rough, coarse and filthy thus sacrilegious. However, his spirituality is still an unresolved mystery. For his contemporaries he was merely and purely blasphemous.Īt the time what prodded the public to define Caravaggio’s art as blasphemous had to do with the images represented by the artist his depictions of the various Madonnas and holy saints were in fact not in line with the stereotypical collective imagery of the seventieth century (namely Baroque and Mannerism). The artist has for a long tome engaged art historians in the attempt of understanding which were his spiritual inclinations. It is known that Caravaggio wasn’t a saint: he was a rebel, outrageous and aggressive but at the same time he was a man of great religious beliefs. If we go back to the seventieth century and examine the figure of Michelangelo Merisi – better known as ' Caravaggio', we may find clear evidence that the so called blasphemous art was already an issue at that time. To a certain extent, Plate’s book is a quest into the use of power, whether the power of images upon the viewer or the power of the artist him/herself and the images that he or she uses to chock, to challenge or simply to affirm a concept.

In many cases when a work of art is labelled as blasphemous there are political implications behind this. Plate’s argument are based on the assumption that the context is essential for the evaluation of a work of art, especially when it contains explicit references to religion. This discussion shall focus on Brent Plate’s publication “ Blasphemy: art that offends” in the attempt of extrapolating the meaning and significance of “blasphemous art”. Many works of art have been described as blasphemous, not only in recent years but pretty much throughout the whole history of history of art.

Blasphemous artwork