Art Censorship.

After Michelangelo completed The Last Judgment , his final fresco for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, in 1541, the work shocked papal conservatives. It upset them not only because of the human nudity it depicted but also because of its portrayals of members of the papal court—including an aide to the pope himself—as damned souls. Seventeen years later Pope Paul IV put a partial end to the controversy by commanding Daniele de Volterra to paint drapery over the exposed genitalia in the painting. For his part in this famous, and enduring, instance of art censorship, Volterra was nicknamed “the britches-maker” by his fellow artists. Nevertheless, his additions to the fresco survived intact until the painting was restored in 1990.