To Those Which They Never Turned Another Cheek: 

The Death of the Virgin, Caravaggio, 1606

He only wanted to commission an ethereal painting of the Virgin Mary’s death to place in his chapel at the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere, Rome. Laerzio Alberti, the insignificant papal lawyer from a Roman small town, was not looking for trouble when he commissioned the painting from Michelngelo Merisi da Caravaggio. He just wanted a painting.

Instead, the papal lawyer received a work that the rest of the papal clergy quickly deemed unfit to be hung in a church.

Caravaggio, known for his flawless shading, red hues, and use of live models, actually kidnapped a corpse from the local morgue to pose as his scarlet-attired Madonna. To make matters worse, the woman whose corpse he modeled as Virgin Mary earned her wages as a gentlemen’s courtesan.

Caravaggio wanted to mortalize the celestial scene, to depict a Virgin Mary that all people could empathize with. Her bloated stomach, showing the ascension of post-mortem bodily gases, were a natural part of everyone's decomposing process, so why, the painter argued, should Virgin Mary be any different?

The church initially rejected Caravaggio’s painting because of the remorseful expressions placed on the crowd’s faces, alluding to Virgin Mary’s death as a mortal farewell rather than an ethereal rebirth. The vibrant crimson of her attire also sparked distaste in the church’s fundamentalist hopes of depicting the maiden in her customary navy-clad innocence.

Their abhorrence for the portrait did not waver after realizing the green hues of the illustrated Virgin’s skin were modeled after the decomposing body of a prostitute.