Sacred–profane dichotomy in the context of "Sacrilegious"

Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object, site or person. This can take the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offence is verbal, it is called blasphemy, and when physical, it is often called desecration. In a more general sense, any transgression against what is seen as the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege, and so is coming near a sacred site without permission.

Most ancient religions have a concept analogous to sacrilege, often considered as a type of taboo. The basic idea is that realm of sacrum or haram stands above the world of the profane and its instantiations, see the Sacred–profane dichotomy.

Cyparissus is a 1620s Baroque painting on a mythological subject from Ovid's Metamorphoses by the Italian painter Jacopo Vignali. It is on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France, to which it had been donated by the collectors Othon Kaufmann and François Schlageter in 1994. Its inventory number is 994-1-8, or 44.994.1.8.

The painting depicts the young Cyparissus, mourning his pet deer, that he had mistakenly killed with his own bow and arrow. The young boy's pain is amplified beyond the description given by Ovid, and possibly inspired by a 1624 Venetian edition of Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara's Metamorfosi ridotte in ottava rima, in which the tearful aspect of the story is emphasized. It is one of the very few profane paintings by Vignali.