A major art exhibition in Milan has been axed without ever opening its doors after a week of high-voltage polemics.
The show was scheduled to open to the public on Tuesday, but it stayed shut because of concerns about whether the works on display offended Catholics and were suitable for children.
On Friday centre-right Mayor Letizia Moratti demanded that 10 controversial works be removed and ruled that under-18s must not be allowed for it to open this weekend.
But organisers said they preferred to scrap the show altogether and stage it in another city instead.
"I agree with this decision," said Milan Culture Councillor Vittorio Sgarbi, the show's sponsor.
"When faced with censorship the most practical response is extreme censorship, i.e. the exhibition's cancellation".
Sgarbi said he even got former centre-right premier and opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi to try to persuade Moratti to change her mind.
"He phoned me back to tell me the mission had failed," the culture councillor explained.
Moratti decided the 10 works were unsuitable because they featured minors or had religious references.
Sgarbi mocked her concern for Catholic sensibilities by calling her "Sister Letizia".
Organizers had already been forced to pull two artworks that had caused uproar earlier in the week.
The first was a Pope Benedict-look-alike sculpture, entitled Miss Kitty, made by local artist Paolo Schmidlin.
It depicts a half-naked elderly man, whose face looks like Benedict XVI's, wearing a white wig and stockings.
Sgarbi bought Miss Kitty and pulled it from the show in a vain attempt to head off the rows.
The second was a work based on a photograph of Premier Romano Prodi's spokesperson, Silvio Sircana, talking to a transgender prostitute - a shot that caused scandal earlier this year when published in newspapers.
Sgarbi, a gadfly art critic and former culture undersecretary, said the row had damaged Milan's image as a city of tolerance.
He won the support of Tiziana Maiolo, a fellow member of Milan's centre-right executive.
"Apart from the work depicting the pope and the one of Sircana, the others could have been left," said Maiolo, the city's industry councillor.
"There was nothing more scandalous that what can be seen at Pompeii.
"You cannot put underpants on monuments. I'm sorry things turned out like this".
The show, entitled Arte e Omosessualita (Art and Homosexuality), was meant to run at the city's Palazzo della Ragione until November.
It featured works by around 140 artists, including Andy Warhol, Britain's David Hockney, Tracey Emin and Gilbert & George, French painting-photography duo Pierre et Gilles and American photographer Bruce Weber, famous for his ad campaigns for the Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren fashion labels.
