Vatican Objects to Image of Frog on Crucifix

Despite objections from the pope, a sculpture of a crucified frog will continue to hang in an Italian museum, board officials said today. The Vatican slammed the work, called Feet First, as a blasphemous attack on Christianity. But museum officials cited artistic freedom and said its German creator considered the piece a self-portrait illustrating human angst, Reuters reports.

The loincloth-clad frog’s hands (which hold a beer mug and an egg) and feet are nailed to a cross, evoking imagery of Jesus. “Surely this is not a work of art but a blasphemy and a disgusting piece of trash,” said a government official. Italy’s culture minister added that state-funded museums shouldn’t “exalt artworks of desecration, of useless provocation and of nonsense.” (More Pope Benedict XVI stories.)