Book review: “Sin: The Art of Transgression” by Joost Jousta

We live in an age that, pretty much, denies sin, particularly sin as it was viewed a century ago, a violation of God‘s law, especially dealing with sex.

Still, the idea of doing something wrong is alive and well. Just think of all the outrage on social media, each side accusing the other for doing something “wrong,“ such as being unpatriotic or being uncritically patriotic, of oppressing women or failing to protect women.

Yet, as Joost Joustra, a curator of art and religion at the National Gallery in London, writes, the idea of sin has always been part of the human psyche.

Sin was there before the Christian Bible; indeed, the concept more or less exists in all major world religions under different monikers. Judaism speaks of the yetzer ha-ra, the inclination to do evil and defy God. Islam mentions in the Quran (among many other concepts) dhanb, a concept very much like sin, and the concept of haram is used in Islam for things and acts that are forbidden. Actions that create negative karma are called papa in Hinduism, and Buddhism has kilsea, a form of moral corruption.

 

Meditation on sin

Joustra makes this observation in the catalog for the Gallery’s 2020 exhibit Sin: the Art of Transgression. What the museum did was gather a number of its works along with a few from other institutions to serve as a meditation on the various ideas about sin.

This is an exercise that virtually any large non-specialized art museum would be able to carry out since so much of western art has been rooted in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as well as the history of Christianity.The Gallery, with more than 2,300 paintings dating from the 13th century, had a wealth of artworks from which to choose.

The Scapegoat

Nonetheless, one of the most striking images in the book isn’t from the gallery, but from the Manchester Art Gallery, The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt. Joustra notes that, in common conversation, a scapegoat is someone who is blamed for the wrongdoing of others. It’s a term that comes from the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Leviticus:

And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man.  The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

 

 

As Hunt noted in a letter, the scapegoat was a rare subject for art. Joustra describes the painting this way:

The dark goat, staring out at us looks exhausted, as if it cannot take our sins away any further. The skull of what appears to be an ibex sticks out of the marshes on the left, echoing the goat’s inevitable fate. The red wool around the goat’s horns has special significance: Isaiah 1:18 reads: “Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.’”

 

The crucifixion

The scapegoat is considered a precursor of Jesus Christ, and, if the animal is unusual in art, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is everywhere, such as Raphael’s The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary in the Gallery’s collection.

Painted here with “arresting simplicity, symmetry, and idealized beauty,” the crucifixion is the act with which Jesus pays for the sins of human men humanity. Joustra writes:

Christ’s body stands out in stark contrast against the blue sky as two angels collect the blood that drips from the wounds in his hands and side. The chalices are reminiscent of those in which wine would be administered during mass at the altar below. More blood drips from Christ’s feet toward the base of the cross.

 

Nudity

As usual in such depictions, Jesus is nude except for a loincloth, in this case, red. Nudity is frequently attached to sin in art, such as Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve where both characters are fully nude and certainly attractive.

Eve is shown giving Adam the apple at the prompting of the Devil as a serpent. Cranach painted many images of Eve and many, too, of the Roman goddess Venus. Here are two versions of Venus and one of Eve:

 

And Joustra writes:

His depiction of the first woman in Genesis and the Goddess of Love from Roman mythology often looks similar. The National Gallery owns two prime examples of the latter. Cupid Complaining to Venus was painted about the same time as Adam and Eve, and Venus and Cupid just afterwards. Both smaller in size, their subject is surprisingly alike. In these three pictures, Venus and Eve are almost interchangeable on account of shared formal qualities. Apart from the presence of Adam in the image of Eve, one would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

That ambiguity goes to the core of art, communicating much more than words are able to, and suggesting even more. Joustra quotes from the artist and critic John Berger:

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity,’ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.”

Joustra adds that “the same could easily be said for Cranach’s Eve/Venus.”

Such ambiguity was certainly at work in the 16th century, when Cranach was painting, despite the great power and presence of Christian moralists. How much more greater is the ambiguity today when moral attitudes are much more fluid.

 

Strange and forever puzzling

Speaking of ambiguous, one of the treasures in the National Gallery’s collection is the strange and forever puzzling An Allegory with Venus and Cupid by Agnolo Bronzino.

Its complexity makes even a short description challenging: Venus steals an arrow from her son Cupid, as she passionately kisses him. Cupid, in turn, fondles Venus’s breast. His buttocks are provocatively on show as he attempts to steal his mother’s crown.

What’s not at all ambiguous is that this is a very sexual picture, “a sinful one even,“ writes Joustra, as this detail from the book shows:

It’s a painting that was censored in many ways throughout much of its history.

Already in its early history during the reign of Louis XIV, ‘flimsy lingerie‘ was added to hide Venus‘s genitalia, and myrtle was painted over Cupid‘s prominent buttocks. When the National Gallery’s first director, Charles Eastlake acquired the picture… (he) instructed a restorer to conceal Venus‘s tongue entering her son‘s mouth and to remove the erect nipple between Cupid groping fingers…

 

Contrasts

One contrast to the Bronzino picture is The Immaculate Conception by Diego Velazquez, a visual celebration of the Roman Catholic dogma of Mary’s perpetual sinlessness.

Another contrast is Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a small startling monochromatic image of Jesus writing in the dust before the woman and her accusers.

The picture might be small, but Brueghel painted one of the most profound calls for introspection in human history… In Dutch, Brueghel’s Christ writes the first words of the second half of John 8:7. The completed statement resonates like a few other pieces of scripture: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”…

It is difficult to underestimate the profundity of Christ retort, and few statements about sin get to the heart of the matter quite so effectively.

Sin is one thing. Judgment, another.

Forgiveness, a third.

Patrick T. Reardon

10.30.25