Giacomo del Pó was an Italian painter, engraver, and occasional sculptor of the Baroque era, the last great age of sexy religious art.

That was before saccharine Rococo, Classical austerity, and Victorian prudery came along to spoil the fun. The Catholic Church was employing the Cecil B. DeMille approach to proselytizing, “You can’t convert a row of empty seats.”  It was an age when pagan and Christian allegory were free to mix with the divine sensuality of bourbon and ice, when there was no such thing as too many cherubs, and when the Virgin Mary could flash a nip with less scandal than Janet Jackson. Needless to say, church attendance was at an all-time high.

Eye-popping spectacles were in, and nobody could create a feast for the eyes with quite such dexterity as Giacomo del Pó. Born to a notable Italian art family, Giacomo studied under fellow baroque painter Nicolas Poussin.  He was known for his church frescos, but more actively decorated the homes of Italy’s filthy rich, including the Royal Palace in Naples.  The fashion of the day was to create something that screamed “aristocrat with awesomely bad taste”: a florid melodrama in Scorsese reds that would appeal to an Italian noble’s religious devotion, personal vanity, and desire for scantily clad eye-candy all at the same time.  Essentially, if Kanye West had been alive in the 17^th century to commission a ceiling fresco of himself as Jesus, this is the guy he would have hired.

When he wasn’t kissing noble butt, Del Pó brought sexiness to other subjects as well. His painting of the Amazon princess Camilla at War suggests an interest in ladies who kick ass, and the story of Adam and Eve as the perfect vehicle for him to combine piety with full frontal. Eve languidly entices Adam with her unabashed nakedness, while Adam appears to have had his abs photoshopped by Chris Hemsworth’s publicist. Just give me that old baroque relgion…it’s good enough for me.