CARNAL NATION

Three fervent Catholics were arrested early Sunday morning for defacing works of art displayed on the Cathedral of Montauban in southwestern France. Footage from surveillance cameras shows a man and two women armed with a brush, glue, and newspaper covering over a large-scale drawing of a nude female angel (pictured right) by contemporary artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest. The drawing was placed at the entrance of the cathedral as part of Ingres and the Moderns, a city-wide exhibition of art inspired by the celebrated 19th-century painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who was born in Montauban in 1780. The exhibition also includes a presentation of Ingres-inspired works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Francis Bacon in the local museum. Pignon-Ernest's drawing was placed at the entrance to the cathedral because it represents an homage to the Ingres masterpiece Vow of Louis XIII, which is housed in the church.

During interrogation, the three suspects, a brother and two sisters aged 23 to 28, confessed their shock over the 'irreverent' display of the angel in the drawing, specifically its depiction in the nude and with genitals.The sex of angels was a hotly debated topic among Christians during the Middle Ages. In 787 CE, the Second Council of Nicaea unequivocally established that angels, as the messengers of God and celestial beings, did not have corporeal, human bodies and thus, had no gender or sexuality. The three suspects argued that the depiction of angels with genitalia and displayed on the facade of the cathedral amounted to sacrilege. In an interview with La Dépêche du Midi, Pignon-Ernest was perplexed by the attack on his art, saying, "I wonder about the fantasies of these young people. How are they disturbed by such images? The denial of the body by such young people surprises me. In addition, catholicism promotes the image of a half-naked man nailed to a cross, which is far more violent." The three suspects were released after questioning. There is no word if charges will be brought against them either by the police or the artist.