As part of the Church’s “Light the World” campaign this year, they released a set of images for people to share. One of them was a modified version of a painting of Mary and baby Jesus that had a number of edits made. See below to see the original and the modified versions. (I’m not sure who to credit for noticing this or making the comparison image. I’ve seen it mentioned in a bunch of Facebook groups and I think on the Mormon Reddit, but I’m not sure who made the original observation.) In honor of the covering up of any hint of Mary’s cleavage in the edited version, I’ve rewritten the song “Mary, Did You Know?”
Mary, did you know that your wicked breasts
Would cause good men to stumble?
Mary, did you know that your sinful chest
Made men’s composure crumble?
Did you know that your cover up
Would save men’s souls from sin?
These parts of you were secretly, morality’s linchpin
They erased the putti as well
That is just . . Weird . .
You know, looking at these images makes me very sad. The Church doesn’t just think of women as second class citizens. The Church is actively contemptuous of us.
I’m concerned that the “cleavage” was something someone thought needed to be digitally airbrushed out. Who are these people? Dare we let them go to the gym with women in tank tops and yoga pants? Shouldn’t we put some sort of warning label on them so the unsuspecting public is aware?
Most Latter-day Saints are fine wearing swimsuits at the beach. But you won’t see them wearing that sort of getup at sacrament meeting. Context matters–even if we get a little overzealous about at times.
Was showing cleavage the fashion among observant 1st-century Jewish women?
@Nathan Whilk: I suspect it is less about 1st century Jewish fashions (assuming Carlo Maratta could have even known anything about 1st century fashions in 1655) and more about the fashions during 1655 when the artist created the painting.
Obviously, this isn’t the first time the church has done this sort of thing and people on the internet have pointed it out. I’m struggling to figure out how I really feel about this practice.
Is it about artistic integrity? These old painting are all in the public domain, so the church can legally alter the paintings for greater modesty if they want, but does it somehow harm something basic about artistic integrity when we are willing to modify art to show a little less cleavage or shoulder or thigh or whatever? Would I feel better if the church simply acknowledged that it modifies paintings in this way?
Is it something (intentionally/unintentionally) misogynistic as Joni says?
As a man, perhaps the most understandable one is the subtle message that “Men cannot control their lusts, so we must control stereotypical male sexuality. Part of our efforts towards this external control is to modify art to be more modest.” Is this what bothers me?
The new FSY tries to emphasize a principled based morality over a rules based morality. Maybe part of my discomfort is that I’m just not sure what the underlying principle(s) is (are) that prompt this sort of change to artistic images.
Hilarious lyrics, Ziff!
This kind of thing is way more harmful than helpful for straight men and boys in the church. The goal shouldn’t be to protect people from the bodies around them, it should be to teach people how to see the bodies around them with respect and how to manage feelings of attraction and arousal. It’s all natural and normal! And I guarantee way more people are noticing Mary’s cleavage now than they were before. Thanks, Streisand effect.
This sounds so similar to just a few years ago when the church put sleeves on a girl’s dress from a painting or photo originally released by the church (1960s or 1970s?) where the dress was sleeveless. I wish I had a link to that.
I found it. It was 10 years ago.
https://bycommonconsent.com/2012/09/03/editing-photos-to-add-cap-sleeves-is-a-bad-idea/
It looks like Carlos Maratta painted more than one version of The Holy Night. The church may have gotten its inspiration from this particular version:
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-virgin-laying-the-sleeping-christ-on-straw/74f50d40-69d4-460d-ba58-f246fe8083de
Oops, Ziff! I didn’t check if anyone else had already posted about this before I put up my post at Wheat and Tares. My apologies. I should have just directed the conversation here. I’m not on Facebook, so I saw the original story at the Salt Lake Tribune.
Well, on the bright side, at least our artists are better than the elderly lady who ruined the fresco of Jesus a few years back https://www.huffpost.com/entry/octogenarians-hilarious-f_n_1821389
What bothers me is how indescribably powerful art is to our collective spirit and community, and how no one realizes that fact, and how easily it is therefore subvertly (or recklessly) used by SLC.
Art is powerful- perhaps the most powerful tool a leader can wield. The most effective leaders (past and present) use symbolism. They lead with poetry, metaphor, analogies, art, music, theater/movies, dress, etc. Conquering a culture, or bridling it, means censoring, replacing, tweaking, and directing art. You send messages, morals, and energy for the next phase through- art. People forget what you say, but they don’t forget how you made them feel and art is the language of feelings. Furthermore, art (successful art) transports others directly into the brain, heart and mind of the creator.
Nelson knows how powerful art is. He’s harnessing art right and left. He’s re-doing all world-wide hymnals. He correlated all meetinghouse art and nearly all temple art. He’s controlling what we see, how we worship, and how that worship is colored. Moroni isn’t in this new narrative, BTW. Few non-mainstream things are. Studying what was changed unlock his entire administrative agenda. He’s steering us in a direction- and we were supposed to take our vitamin pills to prepare. (As a side note, I am scared by our assimilation into evangelical culture and art and assert there is a strong political consequence for mainstreaming our art as opposed to continuing to create our own aesthetic. But, I’ve ranted about that elsewhere and won’t threadjack us today to expound.)
Why are so many people running around amok after learning about the translation process of the BOM? I argue it’s NOT because of what was spoken or written, but because for generations, our art depicted a traditional translation process, with a reader at a desk pointing at a reference place in the plates. Joseph never said anything of the sort. But we didn’t listen to his words, we “listened” to the art. Some artists started making big assumptions as to what “the power of God” looked like. In a medium more powerful than midrash, artists filled in the blanks and conjured that scene for primary kids, Sunday school students, missionaries and murals. I think it was an honest attempt, but it’s a pain point today.
Art is sneaky. I am trying to figure out who Jesus of a Nazareth was, to further my relationship with him and Heavenly Parents. So, I spend a lot of time staring at art depicting him, listening to the great cantatas and masses, reading books, etc.
There’s a story of Dale Parsons being asked by the GAs to re-do parts of his portrait of Jesus in the red robe. He originally drew a feminine-styled face with a sparse double-pointed beard. A lot of older art of both Jesus and a John the Beloved depicts them with feminine features such as rounded chins, pink checks, eastern sparse mustaches and beards if not bare-faced, and other gentle “good shepherd” features. Parsons had built on that aesthetic. But, that wouldn’t do for western religion led by a patriarchy. They wanted a chiseled manly-man’s jaw, carpenters muscles, and a full viking-like beard. Essentially, dial up the testosterone and western features. For 40 years, I never knew that my perception of Jesus had been so carefully crafted. Parsons was able to skillfully make the requested changes right then and there. Those small brushstrokes – transformed the narrative, brought out what we were supposed to perceive as His foremost qualities and traits.
Knowing how impressionable I am to art, I’ve got to find a way to forge my own understanding of Jesus and God the Father for myself. I think we should all be our own artists, learn a craft (painting, music composition, theater, etc.) and paint our own evolving inner faith. We certainly need more diversity and perspectives. And we all have His light.
All of this is to say- these little tweaks to art are massively important. This isn’t about an extra inch of pink dress to cover cleavage, these tweaks are about correlating, story-telling, change management, and our collective values. This, my friends, the control of art, the regulation of our community’s heartbeat. You couldn’t have written a post on a more important topic.
Janey, no worries at all! You all have a bigger platform at W&T, so I’m always glad when you all take issues up there! Also, I mostly just posted this so I could put up my silly song rewrite. 🙂
Fascinating points, Mortimer! I really like your summary point that tweaks of art like this are very important.
bagofsand, thanks for the pointer to the different version of the original!
jks, that’s a great connection to another edit of centuries-old art. I hadn’t realized it was ten years ago!
Kirkstall, I couldn’t agree more. It’s not doing straight men (or non-straight women, for that matter) any favors to try to pretend breasts don’t exist or that we won’t ever see a hint of them whenever we exist in the world. We should be taught that we can control our responses rather than being carefully shielded.
MrShorty, great analysis. I agree that this type of edit seems out of line with the more principles-based version of FTSoY.
Jack, that’s fair as a principle, but it does seem a little odd to me to connect sacrament meeting to Jesus’s birth. I mean, his birth for heaven’s sake, where Mary pushed him out her vagina? And then presumably breastfed him? I know we attach all this religious significance to the event now, but it was still a birth, and modesty for viewers probably wasn’t the number one priority.
Old Man, amen. It seems like an utterly unrealistic thing to expect in people’s lives in general.
Joni, I’m sorry. I can’t argue with your conclusion.
Ziff, I suspect that Maratta had in mind to show Mary in a motherly capacity–and I’m fine with that. But the problem is–it’s the world (the West in particular) that has sexualized the woman’s body to the point where we can’t appreciate that aspect of art from earlier times–and I mean “we” collectively speaking.
And so I think the church is placed in the position of having to walk of very fine line with regard to its messaging.
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I’m “bagofsand” by the way. I didn’t see my first comment as “Jack” post right away–so I used a different handle for my next comment. Sorry for any confusion.