30 Millennia of Erotic Art. Victoria Charles

the most famous of Renaissance artists was Botticelli who, under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, sometimes based his elegantly idealised nudes on specific antique statues and often painted humanistic subjects. His famous Primavera (Birth of Venus, fig. 156), while ostensibly a high-minded humanist allegory, focused on a provocative representation of the nude goddess of love. High Renaissance artists of the next century went even further. Michelangelo developed an ideal of muscular masculine beauty that survives even today. His Dying Slave (fig. 222) for the tomb of Pope Julius II seems not to be in bondage as was intended, but to be languorously revelling in sexual ecstasy. In Venice, Titian created a parallel ideal of feminine beauty with his reclining nudes, particularly the coy Venus of Urbino (fig. 271).

      The rest of Europe pursued a slightly different artistic course. Late medieval stylistic traditions lingered, but artists still used erotic subjects. The Flemish artist Bosch painted visionary images based on religious themes, and managed to make sin look worth the punishment in The Garden of Earthly Delights (fig. 177), where nude figures frolic and indulge themselves sexually and sensually in a fantastic, dream-like landscape. The German artist Dürer brought Italian ideas to northern Europe. Often called the “Leonardo of the North”, Dürer had strong scientific interests which paralleled those of Italian humanists. His nudes often bore an unexpected mix of Italian idealism and northern realism. Dürer’s artistic revolution was simultaneous with the Reformation, which perhaps had a greater ultimate impact on art and society than Renaissance humanism.

      By the 1520s, High Renaissance idealism had evolved into Mannerism. The refined court culture of Europe provided an educated audience for an art appealing to complex and sophisticated tastes. Mannerist artists such as Bronzino employed exquisite artifice in works such as Allegory with Venus and Cupid (fig. 282) – a subject so complex and mysterious that its intended meaning is still uncertain. What is clear is the obvious transgressive eroticism of a nude Venus in a sexual embrace with her own son. Mannerist artists commonly used eroticism as a means to increase the complexity of their work. With sexuality and erotic bodies on such open display, a reaction was probably inevitable. The Catholic Church responded militantly to the rise of Protestantism with the Counter-Reformation when it re-asserted traditional Church doctrines – including strictures against nudity and sexual expression. The Renaissance adulation of the body seemed to have reached an end.

      142. Jean Fouquet, The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (detail from the Melun Diptych), c. 1450–1460.

      Early Renaissance. Oil on canvas, 94 × 85 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, Antwerp.

      The particularity of this painting is due to its geometric composition, set in a convex pentagon often used by Fouquet. The volume given accentuates the sculptural aspect of this Virgin whose face was inspired by Agnes Sorel (the mistress of Charles VII). The diptych assembles the portrait of a Virgin with the one of the patrons in prayer in front of his protector saint.

JEAN FOUQUET(TOURS, 1420–1481)

      A painter and illuminator, Jean Fouquet is regarded as the most important French painter of the 15th century. Little is known about his life but it is quite sure that he executed, in Italy, the portrait of Pope Eugenius IV. Upon his return to France, he introduced Italian Renaissance elements into French painting. He was the court painter to Louis XI. Whether he worked on miniatures rendering the finest detail, or on larger scale in panel paintings, Fouquet’s art had the same monumental character. His figures are modelled in broad planes defined by lines of magnificent purity.

      143. Piero di Cosimo, Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, c. 1485.

      High Renaissance. Oil on panel, 57 × 42 cm. Musée Condé, Chantilly.

      Here is one of the artist’s finest portraits. Simonetta Vespucci is depicted as Cleopatra with the asp around her neck. The snake, also being a symbol of immortality, reinforces the strange atmosphere of this work.

      144. Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, c. 1455–1460.

      Early Renaissance. Tempera on panel, 68 × 30 cm. Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna.

      145. Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, c. 1475–1485.

      Early Renaissance. Tempera on canvas, 275 × 142 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

ANDREA MANTEGNA(1431, ISOLA DI CARTURO – 1506, MANTUA)

      Mantegna, a humanist, geometrist, and archaeologist of great scholastic and imaginative intelligence, dominated the whole of northern Italy by virtue of his imperious personality. Aiming at optical illusion, he mastered perspective. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea’s work flooded in, for example the frescos of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua.

      In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas and the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his entrée into Venice.

      Mantegna reached an artistic maturity with his Pala San Zeno. He remained in Mantua and became the artist for one of the most prestigious courts in Italy – the Court of Gonzaga. Classical art was born.

      Despite his links with Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna refused to adopt their innovative use of colour or leave behind his own technique of engraving.

      146. Antonello da Messina, St Sebastian, 1476.

      Early Renaissance. Panel transposed on canvas, 171 × 85 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

ANTONELLO DA MESSINA(MESSINA, 1430–1479)

      If little else is known about his life, the name of Antonello da Messina corresponds to the arrival of a new technique in Italian painting; oils. He used them especially in his portraits where they were very popular in his day, such as Portrait of a Man (1475).

      Whilst this is only partiall the case, still his work influenced Venetian painters. His work was a combination of Flemish technique and realism with a typically Italian modelling of forms and clarity of spatial arrangement. Also, his practice of building form with colour, rather than line and shade, greatly influenced the subsequent development of Venetian painting.

      147. Antonio del Pollaiuolo (Antonio di Jacopo Benci), Martyrdom of St Sebastian, 1475.

      Renaissance. Oil on poplar, 291.5 × 202.6 cm. The National Gallery, London.

      148. Hans Memling, King David Spies on Bathsheba, 1485–1500.

      Northern Renaissance. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.

      149. Antonio del Pollaiuolo (Antonio di Jacopo Benci), Hercules and the Hydra, c. 1470.

      Renaissance. Oil on wood, 17 × 12 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

      150. Dosso Dossi (Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri), Psyche Abandoned by Love, 1473.

      Renaissance. Oil on canvas, 115.5 × 134 cm. Palazzo Magnani, Bologna.

      151. Ambrogio and Cristoforo de Predis, Fountain of Love, c. 1490.

      Biblioteca Estense, Modena (Italy).

      152. Anonymous, Universal Chronology: The Creation of Eve, Original