The NSFW Bible

Eyeballing the weird, violent and erotic art inspired by the Holy Bible • built by @rojasburke

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‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’

The follower of Jesus named Thomas, who saw his teacher tortured to death, refuses to believe the news of his return.

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,” he says, “I will not believe.”

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus tells him. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The image is a detail from a painting at the Uffizi Gallery Museum in Florence, a copy of the original by Caravaggio.

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Don’t stand so *close* to me

The Gospel of John tells of the meeting between Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Jesus at his empty tomb. Jesus utters the enigmatic words “Noli me tangere” – the Latin version of the Greek “mê mou haptou”. It means something like “do not touch me” or “do not hold on to me”.  Some scholars consider it the most difficult verse of the fourth gospel. The meaning you choose implies different things about the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Does she try to hold him? Was she actually holding him and told to back off? Has she embraced him in the past? Does she now have to prepare for a new relationship with the resurrected son of God? The identification of Mary Magdalene as converted prostitute (never stated or even implied in the actual gospels) has definitely shaped artistic renderings of the “noli me tangere” motif.

The image is a detail from a painting by Francesco Bianchi Ferrari, made sometime between 1490 and 1510. It’s now in the Galleria Estense in Modena. (Public domain image via Wikipedia)

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'with blood almost all things are cleansed'

Showers of blood from the wounds of a crucified Jesus rain down upon a gathering of naked, sinful followers in this 17th century print from the Rijksmuseum. It was made by an unknown artist in the Netherlands.

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Descent of Christ into limbo

One of the four extant parts of an altarpiece produced around 1475 by Bartolomé Bermejo, a painter known for his unidealized depictions, as here, with the wrinkled flesh, scrawny limbs, shriveled genitalia, and the piles of demon shit underfoot.

Accessed via Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya

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‘Do you not fear God?’

You get a glimpse of the hell awaiting sinners – and the resurrected Jesus rescuing souls – in this crucifixion scene detail. The oil-on-panel painting was made in France before 1450, possibly by the artist André d'Ypres. It’s in the Getty Museum.

The man on the cross with the oddly serene expression is one of two convicts crucified alongside Jesus, the one who thinks he’s going to heaven. The other mocks Jesus: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39-43).

“Do you not fear God,” the believer says, “since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” To Jesus he asks: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

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‘put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit’

The story of Jesus journeying to an underworld or antechamber to Hell is not told in the bible, but in the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus. After his death on the cross, Jesus descends into the underworld, shatters the gates to Hell, seizes Satan and binds him in chains until the second coming. He raises up to heaven all the prophets and saints who’ve been imprisoned in limbo. This Harrowing of Hell story was amplified via publications such as the Golden Legend compiled by Jacobus da Varagine in the 13th century.

A couple of passages in Peter supposedly refer to the Harrowing of Hell:

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. [Peter 3:18-20]

For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.[Peter 4:6]

The images are details from a copper on panel painting made by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer in 1597. It’s now in the Mauritshuis Museum.

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Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged…

…by a dude in a Speedo?

An unknown German artist made the woodcut in 1457, printed on vellum with hand-coloring. It’s in the British Museum.

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Flagellation (detail)

Luca Signorelli made this tempera-on-panel painting around 1485 for the confraternity of the Raccomandati at Santa Maria del Mercato in Fabriano, a religious brotherhood whose members were known for practicing self-flagellation. Whatever the artist intended, or his patrons perceived back then, it’s hard for modern eyes to ignore the erotic gay energy. “Called by one critic ‘the master of the buttocks,’ Signorelli lavishes attention on the contours and textures of the male body—in particular, its muscles, skin, and hair,” scholar John G. Champagne observes:

What is disturbing about the flagellation scene portrayed in the Brera standard is its allure. Like all forms of sexuality, masochism is coded; Signorelli’s scene has all the marks of an S/M scenario, from the highly theatricalized poses of the torturers to the fetish-wear of the loincloths on both Christ and his torturers to the fully-dressed figures watching the scene unfold to the proscenium arch that frames the action as theater. We are presented the male bodies via a gaze loving in its attentiveness.

The full painting and its companion piece, a nursing madonna, can be viewed at the Brera Museum’s website.

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‘Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged‘

Another strikingly erotic painting of the flagellation of Christ from the Prado Museum. The oil on panel work was made in 1625 by Daniele Crespi.

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La Flagelación

Renaissance artists kept escalating the eroticism of their scenes of the flagellation of Jesus. This one, from the Prado Museum, was made in the 16th century by a follower of Miguel Ángel.

[hipstafootprint]

Spirit · Zurich 2026

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The Sermon on the Mount, by Beryl Lewis (1939-2021] vs. Bad Bunny (photo by Scott Strazzante)

via artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social

[pigeoncherrypie]

I think my favorite depictions of Mary are the ones in which she’s laying into demons like nobody’s business

Like yes queen, kick his ass

[cuties-in-codices]

st. michael defeating satan

from the hours of marguerite d'orléans, france, 15th c.

source: Paris, BnF, Latin 1156 B, fol. 165r

[hildegardavon]

Berthe Brincour, 1879-1947

Salome, n/d, gouache on paper, 114x119 cm

Collection du Musée national d’archéologie, d’histoire et d’art Luxembourg (MNAHA) Inv. 1947-008/095

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Harrowing of Hell

A detail from a 15th Century Dutch painting of the resurrection, artist(s) unknown; attributed to the Master of the Amsterdam ‘Death of the Virgin’ via the Rijksmuseum