A medieval sculpture of Jews engaged in obscene acts with a pig appears on the facade of a historical German church where Martin Luther preached. On Tuesday, a court rejected a Jewish man's efforts to remove the offensive sculpture.

The sculpture, in the eastern German city of Wittenberg, depicts a pig surrounded by a group of Jewish people, with some suckling at the animal's teats and one man looking under its tail. It's one of the most well-known examples of medieval folk art known as a Judensau — meaning Jews' sow — and is believed to date back to at least 1290.