Anti-clerical art is a genre of art portraying clergy, especially Roman Catholic clergy, in unflattering contexts. It was especially popular in France during the second half of the 19th century, at a time that the anti-clerical message suited the prevailing political mood. Typical paintings show cardinals in their bright red robes engaging in unseemly activities within their lavish private quarters.

Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to remove the church from all aspects of public and political life, and its involvement in the everyday life of the citizen.:

Some have opposed clergy on the basis of moral corruption, institutional issues and/or disagreements in religious interpretation, such as during the Protestant Reformation. Anti-clericalism became extremely violent during the French Revolution because revolutionaries believed the church had played a pivotal role in the systems of oppression which led to it. Many clerics were killed, and French revolutionary governments tried to control priests by making them state employees.

Anti-clericalism appeared in Catholic Europe throughout the 19th century, in various forms, and later in Canada, Cuba, and Latin America.

It had great boom during the anticlerical movement of the Reformation (16th century), during the Reformation itself to express criticism of the Catholic Church and during the Counter-Reformation. At that time, Albrecht Dürer was one of the most famous painters who satirized the subject, as well as paintings such as Four Apostles where he glimpsed his ideas close to Lutheranism, painting the four Apostles probably as a counterpoint to the later ecclesiastical structure. In the same period we find authors like Lutheran Lucas Cranach the Elder who represents the Pope as the Antichrist in the series of engravings Passional de Cristo and Antichrist

Nineteenth and early twentieth century artists known for their anti-clerical art include Francesco Brunery, Georges Croegaert, Charles Édouard Delort, Jehan Georges Vibert, Jules Benoit-Levy and Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala. Masami Teraoka is among the contemporary painters producing anti-clerical art.