Metro

Met accused of whitewashing baby Jesus

“The Holy Family with Angels” by Sebastiano RicciMetropolitan Museum of Art

A Manhattan man is suing the Met, claiming it’s committing sacrilege by depicting Jesus as a blond.

“Racist” paintings portraying Christ as an “Aryan” male should be removed from the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Justin Renel Joseph argues in his Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

The masterpieces are “offensive aesthetic whitewashing” of the reality that the Savior, as a native of the Middle Eastern region, had “black hair like wool and skin of bronze color,” says Joseph, 33, who is acting as his own lawyer.

He says he suffered “personal stress” after viewing “The Holy Family with Angels” by Sebastiano Ricci; “The Resurrection” by Perugino; “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” by Tintoretto; and “The Crucifixion” by Francesco Granacci.

They are especially offensive to him, he claims, because he himself has “black hair like wool and skin of bronze color.”

‘They completely changed his race to make him more aesthetically pleasing for white people’

 - Justin Renel Joseph

“The implication that someone who possesses physical features like the plaintiff could not be the important historical and public figure of Jesus Christ . . . caused the plaintiff to feel, among other things, rejected and unaccepted by society,” court papers say.

The Met, however, called the paintings important, historically and artistically.

“When they were painted, it was typical for artists to depict subjects with the same identity as the local audience. This phenomenon occurs in many other cultures, as well,” said Met spokeswoman Elyse Topalian.

Joseph called the Met’s inclusion of the works in its collection “an extreme case of discrimination.”

“They completely changed his race to make him more aesthetically pleasing for white people,” he told The Post. “I’m suing a public venue which by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 can’t discriminate on a protected basis.”