Similar carvings are on display on the exterior portals of Notre Dame de Paris, I noticed on a recent trip to Paris (Google Image turns them up rather quickly).

As noted, this invokes an entire range of topics and feelings. I agree with your concluding comments concerning Sargent, technically a highly accomplished artist while historically/socially, and perhaps morally, a naive, tertiary figure at best. Still, I'm more diffident concerning the piece itself since at some point this type of iconography becomes historically relevant and it is a first rate piece technically which, from my own subjective pov, does not seem to be grievously offensive. (E.g., compare if it had been intended to offend and additionally had been done in a technically more gauche manner, such as in the style of Nazi or Soviet era realism used to advance the cults of personality and other ideological themes.)

As something of an aside, compare Sargent's Triumph of Religion with a far more historic piece which is sometimes referred to by the same title. We are fast approaching the quin-centennial of Raphael's completion not only of his School of Athens but also of his Disputa, the latter of which is occasionally referred to as the Triumph of Religion, though am not sure of the provenance of this reference. Raphael's School of Athens is, of course, intended to underscore the value of philosophical thought and interests by symbolically portraying prominent thinkers from antiquity. By contrast, the Disputa, which hangs directly opposite The School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, is intended to highlight theological interests and themes. These two works are placed directly opposite one another for various reasons, prominently because the philosophical and theological themes are viewed, both then as now, as complementary, which is not to say in a facile or simple manner. Similarly, The School of Athens serves to anchor or ground the Disputa.

A great deal more could be noted (Raphael himself, scholastics such as Buridan and Oresme, the Renaissance, Copernicus only a few years later, then Galileo Galilei, Urban VIII, etc., etc.), but suffice to say for now (in lieu of ten-thousand words), as a contrast with Sargent's, at best, naive sensibilities, nowhere in Raphael's piece is there a symbolic denigration or slighting of Jews or any other class. It's an instructive contrast, aesthetically and morally and otherwise, one worth noting.

I guess offense, like much else, is in the eye of the beholder. I got a pit in my stomach as soon as I saw the titles of these paintings. I'm familiar with a lot of Sargent's work and have always admired it, but somehow (despite having lived in Boston for 2 years and doing an intership at the Jewish Federaion there) I never heard about this before.

I was also struck by a certain similarity of the features of Sargent's "church" lady to those of this one, supposedly Sargent's most currently popular work. The contexts are rather incongruous.

To be clear, I am offended by aspects of Sargent's work. But am also offended by suggestions in various pieces of publically funded and publically displayed art which assert, for example, logical/scientific positivisms or even non-foundationalism as truth or that a materialist/physicalist metaphysics should be prescribed as a de facto state religion. However, 1) what merely causes offense vs. 2) what needs to be censored and proscribed via suasion but without legal remedy vs. 3) what needs to be subjected to even more assertive legal remedies - reflect qualitatively different categories and different degrees of offense.

Thank God the Christian prophets didn't include you-know-who [pbuh], or there might have been considerably more to deal with than civilized calls for "the opinions of experts, supporters, and detractors."

Hebrew prophets, I meant to say in my previous comment . . . The Globe is extremely delicate -- disingenuous even (could it be?) -- in referring to today's cartoon hysteria, deliberately fomented by Islamicist Danish imams, as "today's standards," dhimmitudinously failing to call a scimitar a scimitar.