Painting of crucified Santa heading to St. Pat’s Cathedral

By Ian Mohr



December 23, 2017 | 4:11pm


Artist Robert Cenedella is taking his controversial Christmas painting, “The Presence of Man” — which shows Santa Claus on a crucifix — to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Christmas Eve to display it after it caused protests at a local gallery and was pulled.

The image shows old St. Nick on a cross above a wasteland of gifts and other seasonal accoutrements. It was hanging in the window of Central Park Fine Arts this week but had to be yanked by gallery owners after less than 48 hours following complaints, sources close to the artist said.

Ironically, the work’s now being defended by Catholic League President Bill Donohue — who condemned the painting when he first saw it displayed two decades ago.

Donohue wrote recently on his site of the nearly 30-year-old work, “It caught my eye when it debuted some 20 years ago. At that time, I said, ‘We took no objection to art that protested the commercialization of Christmas, but we also maintained that it was not obvious that the painting conveyed that message.” He added, “In 1998, I said, ‘Our point was that the artist could have made the same point by putting Santa in a noose, thus avoiding a conflict with Christians.’ ” 

Artist Robert CenedellaGetty Images

Interestingly enough, Cenedella has said that his intention was not to be iconoclastic, but to inspire viewers to go back to the holiday’s Christian roots rather than celebrate its modern commercialism. Said a pal of the artist, “He always wanted to show it on Christmas Eve at St. Patrick’s to get people’s attention back on Christ on the cross instead of the commercialization of Christmas, which this painting is about.”

Either way, we hear Cenedella, whose painting has been included in a past Smithsonian Libraries exhibition, has been cleared by lawyers to bring the painting to St. Pat’s, where it will be displayed outside at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Says a source, “He wants it displayed there right before Mass.”

And perhaps, like many of the greatest contemporary religious fine art “controversies,” some of the flames seem to be fanned by the artist himself. In this case, just in time for art shopping?

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