Renaissance Dreams
Author(s): Rona Goffen
Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 682-706
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America
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RenaissanceDreams
byRONA
GOFFEN
it seems to me that the semarriage, and sex-although
Family,
quence is uncertain-are naturally interrelated in life but not always so in art or, for that matter, in art history. While family and
marriage have been much discussed in recent years by historians,
they have received very little attention indeed from art historians.1
Sex, on the other hand, we have always had with us. And while all of
one's work is self-referential to some extent, whether one is an artist
'Some exceptions to this generality are indicated here, with full citations in the bibliography. Two recent volumes on the Medici, who are probably the most-discussed
Renaissance family, represent significant art historical contributions to the miniindustry of Medici studies. Karla Langedijk has brought together a vast body of material about the family and their likenesses in Portraits of the Medici. In Dynasty and Destiny, Janet Cox-Rearick has examined the ruler imagery developed by and for Duke
Cosimo and Leo X, who sought to express in art their family's dynastic legitimacy.
The interrelationships of branches of the Pesaro family who were patrons of two
chapels and several funerary monuments in S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari were considered in my own volume, Piety and Patronagein Renaissance Venice. In Spirituality in Conflict, I discuss the family lives of saints Francis and Louis of Toulouse and their treatment in art. A recent volume by the historian Alan Macfarlane deals with Marriage and
Love in England. Goldthwaite has seen in palace architecture a reflection of changing
patterns of family life; see his Building of RenaissanceFlorence. For Renaissance art historians, "family" often means neither the subject nor the patron of art, but the artist himself, and how his family life may be related to his art. See, interalia, Beck, "Ser Piero da
Vinci"; Kristeva, "Bellini"; and Schneider, "Raphael's Personality."
Marriage as a subject has been given even shorter shrift by art historians, even in the
consideration of works of art expressly commissioned for marriages, namely portraits
and cassoni. See above at nn. 30-32. As for marriage portraits, and indeed portraits in
general, the bibliography is also sparse. (Two exceptions are Hall, "Messer Marsiglio
and His Bride"; and Hinz, "Studien zur Geschichte des Ehepaarbildnisses.") This scarcity may be due in part to uncertainty about the meaning of some double portraits,
e.g., that ascribed to Fillippo Lippi in the Metropolitan Museum, the Womanat a Casement, for which see most recently Pope-Hennessy and Christiansen, who argue that the
composition is not a wedding or betrothal picture; SecularPainting pp. 56-57. Regarding the depictions of family portraits, see Hughes, "Representing the Family." It is
noteworthy that Hughes, like many of the authors cited in the present article, is not an
art historian but an historian by training. The issues of family and marriage in art have
received far more attention from historians than from art historians, although there are
some indications that this may be changing. For their helpfulness in discussing these
issues with me, I wish to thank the following scholars without necessarily implicating
them in the results: Michael Hirst, William Hood, David Rosand, Sarah Blake
McHam, and especially Stanley Chojnacki.
[682]
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or an historian of art, it may be that this psychological truth carriesa
particulardanger when one is dealing with matters that are so intimate as family, marriage, and sex.2 Moreover, there is another issue
involved when one is concerned with works of art, at least in the
Renaissanceor in any period when art was made for patrons, and that
is precisely the presence of another psyche in the mixture, in addition
to that of the artisthimself and that of the historian-observer. Added
to these considerations, especially when family and marriageare the
themes involved, there are also the laws and mores of society which
come into play. But when sex is the subject, the situation is rather
different, if only because human biology is still the same now as it
was then (although medical theories about it have changed considerably), and because, unlike marriageand the family, sex can be a private matter achieved (or perpetrated)without the approbationof society and often indeed despite society's disapprobation.
Granted that the interests or rather propensities of the artist and
patron (and of the art historian) should be acknowledged and duly
considered, when this is historically possible, we must also recognize
the primacy of the visual evidence. Occasionally art historians may
be too eager to find in a particulartext relevance to visual imagery,
for no other reason than the contemporaneousness of the written and
visual sources;and in the same way, specialistsin other fields may be
seduced by a particularimage, and not consider its artistic context.
Scholars who are accustomed to dealing with notarial formulas of
expression, for example, or with literarytropes, may sometimes forget that the visual arts also have requirements, traditions, and prescriptions. Renaissance art is not merely an illustration of Renaissance life, and although it may reflect aspects of that life, art is
primarily a reflection of itself-that is, like the scholar, art is selfreferential.
Two cases in point are provided by Titian and Michelangelo, both
examples much discussed in recent literature. Each of the two giants
of sixteenth-century Italianart representedsexual subjects, and each
wrote letters referring to his imagery. On January I, 1533, Michel-
2It is no accident that the history of marriage and the family has become a major
scholarly interest in recent years, when those ancient institutions have seemed to be
suffering new, threatening kinds of stress: current affairs and the concerns of historians
are perforce related to recent trends in history as we perceive it.
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angelo wrote a cover letter, as it were, to the Roman nobleman
Tommaso de' Cavalieri, to accompany a gift of two drawings, the
Ganymedeand the Tityos(Figs. I-3). In the first two drafts of his letter, but not in the final version, Michelangelo included a suggestive
postscript: "It would be permissible to name to the one receiving
them [the drawings] the things that a man gives, but out of nicety it
will not be done here."3The very fact that Michelangelo drafted the
letter twice before sending the third and final version reveals its importance to him; consciously or unconsciously, he seems to have
meant not only the drawings themselves by the phrase "the things
that a man gives," but their content as well, as we shall see.
Some twenty-one years after Michelangelo's letter (in 1554), and
in a much more formal vein, Titian wrote to Philip II of Spain, informing the monarch that the pictures planned as companion pieces
for the frontal composition of Danae would representvarious mythological characters(also nude, of course) from other points of view.4
To be sure, Titian was addressing (and tantalizing)a king and patron
from whom he hoped to receive further commissions, whereas
Michelangelo's letter was written to a beloved friend, to whom the
artistwas presenting an "unsolicited gift." Even so, both artists'letters embody much the same kind of (written) evidence about their
works, and in each case, scholars should naturallytake this evidence
into account.
There is no doubt that King Philip, and Titian himself, for that
matter, liked to look at nude women; and no doubt that Michelangelo loved Cavalieri, although whether this love was consummated sexually is not known. But does that mean that the artists'letters (and in the case of Michelangelo, also his poems) tell us the
whole story? Probably more letters are in existence from any one of
3Translatedby Creighton Gilbert, quoted and discussed by James Saslow, Ganymede,p. 50. For transcriptionsof the Italiantexts, see Milanesi, Le letteredi Michelangelo
pp. 462-64. Saslow's volume is a noteworthy contributionto a remarkable
Buonarroti,
wave of studiesof homosexual subjectsin recentyears. N.b. also the newjournal, The
EuropeanGay Review,which began publicationin late 1986. The first volume includes
an essay byJohn Hale, "Homosexualityin RenaissanceVenice." For a considerationof
social attitudesregarding sodomy and legal measures taken against it, see Labalme,
"Sodomy and VenetianJustice,"pp. 217-54, and n.b. p. 254 for St. Bernardinoof Siena'scondemnationof the act and the Florentine"officialsof the Curfew."
4Seebelow at n. I2.
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RENAISSANCE
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FIG.I-Michelangelo, Rapeof Ganymede,drawing, Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum,
Harvard University; photo, Fogg Art Museum
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FIG. 2-Michelangelo,
Tityos, drawing, Windsor, Royal Library; reproduced by
gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
us-and more prosewriting,if not poetry-than survivefor Titian
andMichelangelo;andprobablyfew if anyof us revealin writingour
innermostthoughts(orallof them)on sex, or evenon marriageand
writtensourcesfor havfamily.So while we blesstheseRenaissance
and
while
we
cherish
and
consult
them,we alsorecoging survived,
nizethatthey aresecondaryto the imagesthemselvesin thesecases.
Theimagesmustbe acknowledgedasa primarysource;whenworks
of artareat issue, writtensourcesaresecondaryto the visual.And
when we look at Titian'spaintingsof nudesfor Philip(or fQrother
patrons)andMichelangelo'sdrawingsforCavalieri,we seethateach
masterrepresentedfarmorein his imagesthanhe describedin writing.
As for Michelangelo,he not only saidmore in his drawings,he
saidit more directlythanhe daredin his lettersandsonnets.The tilt
of the eagle's tail feathersin the Ganymede
drawingexpressesfar
moreaboutthe artist'sfeelingsfor Cavalierithanwereputinto writ-
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RENAISSANCEDREAMS
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FIG.3-Verso of Fig. 2. Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen
ElizabethII
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688
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ing (Fig. I).5 Here is the godJupiter, Michelangelo's surrogate, not
merely carrying off his beloved Ganymede/Cavalieri, but enjoying
the fulfillment of his desire as he does so. This is not merely a literal
flight to heaven, like previous Renaissancedepictions of the subject,
but a figurative transportationto ecstasy, and the expression on Ganymede's face reveals his pleasure in the act-not fear caused by his
air-borne rape, not anticipation of love, but its climax. Even if the
theme of Ganymede may be couched with high-minded Neoplatonic raisons-d'etre,and even if the companion drawing of Tityosexpresses fear or guilt, as Saslow and others have suggested, nonetheless the Ganymedein itself is an explicit, unabashed, and loving
depiction of sexual fulfillment: and in this quality, not unlike Titian's
poesie, as we shall see. As for Tityos, bound to Tartaruswhere an insatiablevulture feeds forever on his liver, his story had always been
understood as an illustration of the punishment of unwelcome and
unsuccessful seduction (Fig. 2).6 Here, it seems to me, Michelangelo
has reversed the roles played in the Ganymede:now the nude hero,
who is more muscular and more mature than the boy loved by Zeus,
evidently represents the artist, and the voracious bird sent by the
gods to punish him is Cavalieri who, Michelangelo fears, may reject
his love and penalize the lover. Perhaps the depiction of such fearful
retaliationwas intended both as an expiation and as a plea to the beloved. But what are we to make of the verso of this sheet, with Michelangelo's adaptation of the reclining posture of Tityos to represent the ResurrectedChrist (Fig. 3)? To be sure, this is an illustration
of the artist's creative imagination at work, but the translationfrom
Tityos to Christ is certainly fraught, especially in this context, and
especially when we recall that "female erotic and sexual experience
5Thissheet, in the Fogg Art Museum, seems to be Michelangelo'sreplicaor variant
of the one sent to Cavalieri,which has been lost, as arguedby MichaelHirst. He notes
that the Fogg drawing, which Hirst acceptsas autograph,is of the wrong proportions
to have been the pendantofCavalieri's Tityos(our Figs. 2 and 3). See Hirst, "A Drawing of the Rape of Ganymedeby Michelangelo."
6The object of Tityos' desire was Latona, the mother of Diana and Apollo. For a
summary of various views regarding the Tityos, see Saslow, Ganymede,pp. 33-39.
Saslow, p. 35, sees the nudes in the two drawings as similar not only in pose but in
type, but to my eye the Tityosrepresentsa more muscularand masculinefigure. The
musculatureof the arms, for example, is much more powerful in the Tityosthan in the
Ganymede,not only becauseof their differentsituationsbut becauseof differentanatomies, and the face seems older (as well as expressiveof pain ratherthan pleasure).
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[was] used to describe the soul's union with Christ."7 If spirituality
can be expressed in female sexual metaphors, why not those of male
sexuality?The question is worth considering even if one cannot yet
answer it with certainty.
The drawing of Ganymedemay be viewed not only with its literary sources (both classicaland Michelangelesque) and with the companion Tityosin mind, but also with reference to the closely related
theme of Leda, which Michelangelo representedin a painting done at
about the same time as the drawings (Fig. 4). As an eagle, Zeus carried the boy Ganymede off to heaven; as a swan, the god enjoyed
Ledahere on earth. And in each case, Michelangelo was in fact representing the same subject, viz., sexual intercourse, with allowances
made for bird physiology. In the case of the Leda, we recognize the
tell-tale tilt of the bird's tail feathers and "the missionary position,"
which, according to Medieval and Renaissancebiologists and theologians, was the only acceptableposition for sexual intercoursebecause
it was most likely to lead to conception; and indeed, did so in this
case.8 Leda's eyes seem to be closed, "as if dreaming her rape," as
Hibbard described her.9 But Michelangelo's interpretation of Leda
andtheSwanis farless "dreamy" than his drawing of the Rapeof Ganymede.To be sure, the Ledais known only from copies: the painting
was taken to France in 1531, and destroyed about a hundred years
later, apparently by order of an offended Anne of Austria. Thus
while Michelangelo's composition is known from copies, the subtleties of his execution have been lost to us, and must be imagined with
referenceto other works by him. Yet, for all that these lovers kiss,
7CarolineWalker Bynum, speaking of trends that increase "steadily from the
twelfth century on"; "Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in
Twelfth-CenturyCistercianWriting," in idem,Jesusas Mother:Studiesin theSpirituality
of theHighMiddleAges, p. 138 andpassim.
8See Noonan, Contraception,pp. 224-26, 238-41; and also Schutte, "Trionfo delle
or
about menstruation, child-bearing, and embryology in
donne," p. 477. F theories
the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, see Bullough, "Medieval Medical and Scientific Views of Women," and Thomasset, "Quelques principes de l'embryologie medievale."
9Hibbard, Michelangelo, p. 225, and 223-26 on the painting, begun by January
1530, and originally intended for Alfonso I d'Este. In I53I, Michelangelo gave the
painting to his assistant Antonio Mini to provide dowry money for his sisters. Mini
brought the Leda to France in December of I 53 I. See also Rigolot, "Leda and the Swan:
Rabelais's Parody of Michelangelo," especially pp. 689-92 on the painting.
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FIG.4-Jacob van den Bos, engraving after Michelangelo, Ledaandthe Swan, Paris,
Bibliotheque Nationale; photo, Giraudon-ArtResource
and despite the responsive way in which Leda'sleg wraps aroundthe
swan's wing, the composition is profoundly disturbing and perhaps
distastefulin ways that the Ganymedeis not, and one can understand,
if not forgive, Anne of Austria's apparent command that Michelangelo's painting be destroyed. Awkwardness of pose-especially
Leda's-suggests the involuntarinessof her participation(for example, her hanging left arm) and is combined with convolutions in the
modelling of flesh and drapery. The visual and expressive results are
quite different from those of the Ganymede.While the youth in the
drawing is slender, with smoothly modelled musculaturethat suggests the softness of his skin, the woman-based upon a male model,
like all of Michelangelo's women-is muscular, seemingly cold and
hard to the touch. The female nudes in surviving paintings by
Michelangelo give some idea of the Leda'soriginal appearance:Leda
must have seemed unnaturallymasculine, more heroic than lovely,
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whereas Ganymede's appearanceis feminized and more sensuous.
Even if Michelangelo's poems and letters did not exist, even in the
absence of contemporaries' comments about him, his compositions
alone would suggest (not demonstrate) his feelings.10Nonetheless,
we should remember Freud's dictum that sometimes a cigar is just a
cigar. It is the responsibleuse of both visual and written evidence that
warrantsour drawing certainconclusions about the artistand his art.
In the case of Titian's paintings, it is clearthat these figures are not
only nude women from different points of view, despite his limited
descriptionsof them. "Because the figure of Danae, which I have already sent Your Majesty, is seen entirely from the front," Titian explained to King Philip, "I have chosen in this other poesia [he meant
the VenusandAdonisnow in the Prado] to vary the appearanceand
show the opposite side, so that the room in which they are to hang
will seem more agreeable. Shortly I hope to send you the poesia of
Perseusand Andromeda,which will have a viewpoint different from
these two; and likewise MedeaandJason."ll
First of all, Titian's idea of representing similar figures seen from
various points of view was not new in Italianart. A century earlier,
for example, Gentile da Fabriano had painted and Pisanello had
drawn pairsof horses and other figures in this way, purposefullyjuxtaposing frontal and rear views within the same composition. The
formal and naturalisticconcerns that motivated them-the interestin
incorporating two or more views in one scene so as to provide a
more complete image, with implications of space and time, and with
referenceto the paragone,12 the rivalry of painting and sculpture-all
10Because Michelangelo provided so much evidence about himself, and because his
contemporaries likewise recorded much about him, he has become the subject of historical psychoanalysis, including consideration of the relationship of his sexuality to
his art, most recently by the psychiatrist Robert S. Liebert, Michelangelo: A Psychoanalytic Study. N.b. also the reviews by Oremland, InternationalJournalof Psychoanalysis,
and by Steinberg, The New York Review of Books. With much less biographical evidence to guide her than is available for Michelangelo, Laurie Schneider has proposed a
suggestive Freudian analysis of Donatello's David as a homoerotic image in which the
severed head of Goliath becomes the castrated phallus of the hated then loved fatherrival. See Schneider, "Donatello and Caravaggio," and the comments by Hans J.
Kleinschmidt, a psychiatrist, pp. 92-97.
"Quoted and translated by Hope, Titian, p. I25.
12Painting, so the paragone argument went, is superior to sculpture because several
views of a figure or object can be represented at once. In sculpture, however, the
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this motivated Titian as well: in part, the several compositions that
he planned were meant as an artistictour-de-force, and his great admirer Dolce recognized this, while also appreciatingthe frank sensual appealof the paintings. Writing to Alessandro Contarini, Dolce
admired Titian's figure of Venus (in the Venusand Adonis, Fig. 5),
".
. turned from the back, not for lack of art, ...
but to show dou-
ble art. Because in turning her face toward Adonis, forcing herself to
restrainhim with both her arms, and half seated . .. she shows by all
some gentle and lively sentiments, and such as arenot seen anywhere
else as they are in her. ..."
Noticing in particular the way in which
Venus' flesh responds to her weight as she sits, Dolce praisedthe superiority of Titian's painting to sculpture: ". . . One can with truth
say that every stroke of the brush is one of those strokes that Nature
knows how to make with her hand . .. there is no man so acute of
vision and ofjudgment who, seeing her [Venus], does not believe her
to be living; none so chilled by years or so hardof complexion that he
does not feel himself warmed, softened, and all the blood coursing in
his veins. Nor is this a wonder; if a statue of marble can in a way with
the stimuli of its beauty so penetrate into the marrow [pulp] of a
youth that he leaves a stain there, then what can this [picture] do,
which is of flesh, which is beauty itself, which seems to breathe."13
Undeniably Dolce, and surely Philip as well, saw and Titian intended that they see in his Venusan erotic image (Fig. 5). But neither
viewer must move around the statue in order to behold its various aspects. Vasari made
this point in his story of a lost painting by Giorgione in which the artist exploited
reflections in metal and water to reveal different views of a figure simultaneously. Le
operedi Giorgio Vasari, ed. Milanesi, IV, 98 (hereafter abbreviated Vasari-Milanesi).
13"LaVenere e volta di schena, non per mancamento d'arte, . . .ma per dimostrar
doppia arte. Perche nel girar del viso verso Adone, sforzandosi con amendue le braccia
di ritenerlo, e mezza sedendo sopra un drappo sollo di pavonazzo, mostra da per tutto
alcuni sentimenti dolci e vivi, e tali, che non si vedono fuori che in lei; dove e ancora
mirabile accortezza di questo spirito divino, che nell'ultime parti ci si conosce l'ammaccatura della carne causata dal sedere. Ma che? puossi con verita dire, che ogni colpo di
pennello sia di que' colpi, che suol far di sua mano la Natura. . . . Vi giuro, signor mio,
che non si truova uomo tanto acuto di vista e di giudicio, che veggendola non la creda
viva; niuno cosi raffreddato dagli anni, o si duro di complessione, che non si senta riscaldare, intenerire, e commuoversi nelle vene tutto il sangue. Ne e meravigliosa; che se
una statua di marmo pote in modo con gli stimoli della sua bellezza penetrare nelle midolle d'un giovane, chi'egli vi lascio la macchia, or, che dee far questa, ch'e di carne,
ch'e la belta stessa, che par che spiri?" Quoted and discussed by Ginzburg, "Tiziano,
Ovidio," p. 8.
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FIG.5-Titian, VenusandAdonis,Madrid, Prado;photo, Scala-ArtResource
Dolce's text nor Titian's letter should be read in an historical vacuum. Dolce's praise of the picture'seroticism is also a defense of the
superiorityof Titian's painting to the artof sculpture,including classicalsculpture, for the excited young man to whom the authorrefers,
who is so arousedby the sight of the statueof Venus thathe stainsthe
marble by ejaculation, is a referenceto the ancient worshiper of the
goddess of Cnidos whose devotion was supposedly expressedin this
conspicuous biological way.14 Moreover, Dolce doesn't mention
14Forthe vandalismby attemptedcopulationwith the Cnidian Venusby Praxiteles,
see the anecdotetold by Pliny the Elder, HistoriaNaturalis,bk. 36, chap. 2I. See also
J. A. Overbeck, Die antikenSchriftquellen
(Leipzig, I868), nos. 1227-45. When I rememberedthe story but not the source, ProfessorC. John Heringtonvery kindly gave
me the reference.
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only the lovely derriereof Titian's Venus; he writes of her emotions
as well, and appreciatesthe way in which she attempts to hold back
her lover. And this is no small matter:precisely the emphasis on her
feelings, which even Dolce recognized, and which Titian depicted
with such sensitivity, distinguishes the Venusand Adonis, Titian's
painting is certainlyerotic, but it is also a dramaabout the poignancy
of separationand the foreboding of tragedy as the two lovers part:
Cupid is asleep, and Adonis' hunting dogs tug at the leash. It seems
unlikely that Philip's partings from his wife, Queen Mary of England, would ever have been so tender;but I doubt that Titian's loving conception of a woman's feelings in such a situation, which he
painted as explicitly as her flesh, would have been possible without
his own sympathetic sense of a woman's emotions. Perhaps too we
may see in his nudes some reflectionof changing, increasinglyloving
attitudesof husbands toward their wives in Cinquecento Venice, or
even an encouragement of that sweet dream.15
The Danae, which was also painted for Philip and mentioned by
Titian in his letter to the monarch, depicts another of Zeus' exploits:
this time, the god penetrateshis mistress in the form of a shower of
gold (Fig. 6). Her pose, related to that of Michelangelo's Leda (and
the Medici Chapel Night), is equally explicit but far more responsive.
In addition to depicting sexual intercourse, Titian's Danae is also
about the ecstasy of love offered to and enjoyed by a beautifulyoung
woman, and the inherently bitter contrast between her pleasure and
the crass greed of an old ugly old hag, who sees only money where
the other senses the beloved. Titian said none of this in his letter to
Philip, but gave full expression to his ideas and feelings in his art, like
the "valiant artisans" praised by the Venetian patriarch Lorenzo
Giustinian. They "create some beautiful work to the memory of
their art," Giustinian explained, "so that what they cannot express
with their tongues, they make manifest with the very beauty of their
work."16 What Titian made manifest in his nudes is undeniably
erotic, but not merely erotic.
50On these changing attitudes, see Chojnacki, "Wives and Husbands in LateMedieval Venice."
16Devoti sermoni della solennitd de Santi del Beato Lorenzo Giustiniano . . primo Patriarcadi Venezia, transl. by Andrea Picolini (Venice, 1565), fol. I44r. Giustinian died
in 1456 and was venerated as a saint in Venice from then onward, long before his can-
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FIG. 6-Titian, Danae, Madrid, Prado;photo, Scala-ArtResource
Just as Titian's poesie for Philip II depict more than nude figures
seen from differentpoints of view, so too the artist's Venusof Urbino
representsmore than "the naked woman" (Fig. 7). To be sure, that is
how the painting's first owner, Guidobaldo della Rovere, described
her, and some scholars (including Ginzburg, Hope, and Ost) have
concluded from this succinct description and from the nude's unabashedexpression that she is no goddess, and indeed no lady.17In
onizationin 1690. Cf. Leonardoda Vinci on the superiorityof visual over verbal or
writtenexpression;TreatiseonPainting,ed. and transl.by A. PhilipMcMahon(Princeton, 1956),II, 37.
17Ginzburg,"Tiziano, Ovidio"; Hope, Titian,p. 82, and idem,"Problemsof Interpretation";andOst, "TizianssogenannteVenus." Plus Cachange ...: HansTietze had
alreadynoted in 1954 that there was "no hint of any mythological connotation"in
sixteenth-centurymentions of the Venus;"An Early Version of Titian's Danae," pp.
206-207.
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FIG.7-Titian, VenusofUrbino,Florence, Uffizi; photo, Scala-ArtResource
part, these authors are reacting to what they consider to be
Panofsky's over-interpretation of the nudes as Neoplatonic images
of the senses.18But words are not everything-not even Cinquecento words describing Cinquecento paintings. For example, in his
life of Titian, Vasari mentioned an early painting of the Flight into
Egypt, "la Nostra Donna che va in Egitto."19Although the author
did not say so, he and all his readers, then as now, knew and know
perfectly well that the Madonna did not "go into Egypt" alone; she
was accompanied not only by her Child whose birth occasioned the
flight, but by Joseph, and possibly by other figures (human and/or
angelic) as well, to say nothing of her donkey.
l8Panofsky, Problemsin Titian, Mostly Iconographic,pp. 109-71, dealing with
"Reflectionson Love and Beauty" and "Titianand Ovid." The title of Ginzburg'sarticle alludesto this chapterin Panofsky'sposthumouslypublishedvolume.
VII, 429. Titian'spaintinghas been lost; but therecannotbe, by
WVasari-Milanesi,
definition,a "Flightinto Egypt" that depictsMary alone.
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To return to Titian's Venusof Urbino,David Rosand and others
have argued that she and the various relatedfigures by Titian do represent the goddess Venus: these women have the attributes of that
goddess, roses and pearls, for example, and they assume a variant of
the "pudica"pose that is typical of her.20(In the case of the Venusof
Urbino,two cassoni or marriagechests and a myrtle plant should also
be included in an explanation of the imagery, and we shall return to
these furnishings.) No one with eyes would deny the franksexual appeal of these paintings, but that does not make this lady a tramp, or a
courtesan.21Guidobaldo of course was perfectly correct when he described the painting as a "naked woman"-but he was also incomplete in his description. (And if that phrase describes completely
Guidobaldo'sviews about the picture, this may say more about him
than it does about Titian's art.)
Confirmation of the identity of Titian's figure is found in the composition that inspired it-not a written, but a visual documentation,
Giorgione's Venus who sleeps in Dresden (Fig. 8). The pose that
Giorgione invented for his Venusis an imaginative conflation of two
(or three) ancient types, each with its own resonance:the "modest,"
or "pudica"gesture associatedwith Venus, who calls attention to the
parts of herself which she pretends to conceal, is combined with the
reclining posture and sleep of other classicalcharacters,indicated by
the action of the right arm, bent upward to cushion the head.22This
gesture has often been related to figures of sleeping nymphs or of
Ariadne, but might just as well (or even better) allude to characters
20Rosand,"Ermeneuticaamorosa."
21Althoughthe woman depictedin the Venusappearsin other works by Titian, notablyLa Bella(Florence,Pitti), she is not representedwith the idiosyncraciesof portraiture but ratheras an idealization-i.e., this is not a portraitlikeness. For portraitsof
women (including Titian's Flora) who may be more securely identified as courtesans,
who, in Renaissance Venice, were often women of considerable culture and wealth, see
the classic article by Held, "Flora, Goddess and Courtesan." More recently, Cozzi has
dealt with related matters; see his "La donna, l'amore e Tiziano." On related issues, see
also Olivieri, "Eroticism and Social Groups in Sixteenth-Century Venice: The Cour"
tesan.
22The action was invented by Praxiteles for the Aphrodite of Cnidos. Supposedly
surprised by a worshiper (or admirer) as she steps from her bath-the statue was set in a
pool of water-the goddess conceals herself as best she can, placing one arm across her
breast and the other over her pudenda: she is literally modest or ashamed (pudica) but
provocative at the same time. See also above at n. 14.
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FIG.8-Giorgione,
Resource
Sleeping Venus, Dresden, Gemildegalerie; photo, Alinari-Art
such as the BarbariniFaun, whose sleep, due to drunkenness, conveys much the same kind of unconscious self-abandonment to the
senses as the Venus.
Giorgione's Venusis indisputably recognized as the goddess primarily because the Cupid, painted by Titian and painted over at a
later date, was mentioned by Michiel and is visible in X-ray.23Cupid
holds a symbolic bird that struggles for freedom, and in his other
hand is one of his arrows, pointed somewhat threateninglyat himself. Meanwhile, Venus is asleep, and the caressinggestureof her left
hand makes explicit the subject of her dreams. As it happens, this
Michiel describedGiorgione's "sleepingVenus with Cupid" in the
23Marcantonio
house of GirolamoMarcello. See Notizie d'operedi disegnonellaprimametadelXVI, ed.
by Jacopo Morelli (Bologna, I8oo), p. 66. For a reconstructionof the paintingand a
considerationof its imagery, seeJaynieAnderson, "Giorgione,Titianandthe Sleeping
Venus."
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kind of caress, which under normal circumstanceswould have been
soundly condemned, was approved by theologians in one situation
only, namely when a husband has withdrawn from his wife before
she has made her own emission, which was believed necessary for
conception.24(But Cupid has not yet let go his bird and his arrow:
perhapsthey are waiting for each other, which simultaneity was also
counselled by moralists.) Moreover, in an extraordinarypassage in
his "Treatise on the Womb," Anthonius Guainerius, professor of
medicine at Pavia in the early fifteenth century, advised his (male)
readersprecisely how to achieve this fruitfulconsummation. In order
to "excite sleeping Venus," the good doctor wrote, possibly alluding
to an ancient epithalamic expression, and to bring "incredible delight" to the woman, the husband should caress her in various specified ways, including that illustratedby Giorgione. Then, the doctor concludes, "having diligently observed these precepts, they [man
and wife] should strenuously resolve their debt to the Lady Venus,
taking careto emit their seed in the same instant."25
Now, I am not suggesting that Giorgione and/or his patron, apparently Girolamo Marcello, meant this composition to illustrate a
presumed gynecological fact, and certainlynot in so heavy-handed a
way. But it is safe to assume that one or both of them would have
known of the biological assumptions and moral teachings regarding
this aspect of female sexuality, and that their awareness consciously
or unconsciously influenced their conception and perception of the
Venus.Furthermore, there is suggestive evidence that the Dresden
Venuswas commissioned to commemorate Marcello's marriage, as
Jaynie Anderson has argued, and if this is correct, then the painting
becomes a dream of love in marriagesuch as words and actions were
only beginning to describe and effect in Renaissance Italy.26While
24As conception (or its possibility) was the only justification for sexual intercourse,
and as the woman's emission was believed necessary to achieve conception, even masturbation may be warranted under these circumstances, according to Medieval and
Renaissance theologians. See Flandrin, "Sex in Married Life in the Early Middle
Ages," especially p. I I9.
25Quoted and translated in Lemay, "Anthonius Guainerius and Medieval Gynecology," pp. 331-32. For the literary image of sleeping Venus in Latin epithalamia, see
Anderson, "Giorgione, Titian," p. 33 8.
26Anderson, "Giorgione, Titian," p. 341; Marcello married Morosina Pisani on 9
October 1507. For nuptial bliss in Renaissance Venice, see Chojnacki's forthcoming
essay, "Wives and Husbands."
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paintings such as Giorgione's Venusand Titian's variouspoesieare in
a sense voyeuristic, perhaps they also encouraged in the patronviewer (traditionallymale) a sympathetic appreciationof the female
sexuality that they depict: they are exempla of conjugal virtue as well
as being titillation for their intended viewers.
In any case, Giorgione's Venusis the source for all of Titian's interpretations of the same goddess: her pose is as much her attribute as
the pearls that she wears in the Venusof Urbino,or the roses that she
holds, or the myrtle on her window sill.27But now that she has
awakened to behold her beloved directly, psychological tension esI would add, the
tablished by the sexual demand-and,
intelligence-explicit in her gaze have replacedthe self-absorption of
the Dresden Venus.The Dresden Venuswas remarkableprecisely in
her action of self-fulfillment (among other things)-but she was
asleep, and in an idealized landscape besides. The Venusof Urbino
adds assertivenessto independence:fully awake, cognizant, and selfaware, she reclines in a well-furnished, modern (Cinquecento) bedroom and addresses her sexual power forthrightly to the beholder.
Possibly for these psychological reasons-all, by the way, consistent
with Renaissancebeliefs about the insatiable sexuality of womensome scholars have seen in her face confirmation of Guidobaldo's
pithy label, "the naked woman. 28 (If she's not a virgin, she must be
a whore.) But the attributes of the goddess and for that matter the
twin cassoni, accoutermentsof marriage, and the myrtle, a marriage
plant, indicate more than he said about the painting.29If we are to
27The pose was adapted by Botticelli for the figure of Truth in the Calumny of
Apelles (Florence, Uffizi) because that character was described in the ekphrasis on
which he based his composition as "modest or ashamed," hence "pudica." Leon Battista Alberti reported Lucian's ekphrasis of the Calumny in On Painting, bk. 3; On Painting and On Sculpture, The Latin Texts of De Picturaand De Statua, ed. and transl. by Cecil
Grayson (London, 1972), pp. 94-97.
28Not only were women believed to be the more sinful sex, but they incited men to
concupiscence. This view was (and in some quarters, alas, still is) concomitant with the
assertion of the inherent inferiority of women. See Maclean, The RenaissanceNotion of
Woman, p. I5 and passim.For a more enlightened and accurate Renaissance view of
sixteenth-century women, subjugated to men by education and custom, see Fahy,
"Three Early Renaissance Treatises on Women."
29Cassoni evidently always came in pairs and were always made for married couples
at the time of their wedding. Commissioned by the future husband or by his (male)
relatives, they became part of the bedroom furnishing after his marriage. See also n. 30
below.
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take seriously that plant and those cassoni-a kind of furnishing exclusively associated with married couples in the Renaissance-then
the Venusof Urbinobecomes, presumablylike her prototype in Dresden, a depiction of the woman's sexuality, dangerous, to be sure, but
given appropriateexpression in marriage,in fact, invited (indeed, insisting) to gratify itself in marriage. Earlier cassoni, not coincidentally, were adorned on the outside with literarysubjects;later examples, as in Titian's picture, with decorative motifs. But on the inside,
under the lid, they carrieda different, more private kind of imagery:
figures making love, for example, or nude infants suggesting or
promising the fertility of the couple, the conception of a child being
thejustification and purpose of sexual intercourse.30
Similar juxtapositions characterized the decoration of deschida
parto,painted trays presented to new mothers. A case in point is the
desco da parto dated 1428 and attributedto Bartolomeo di Fruosino.
The obverse shows a perfectly respectableand appropriatescene, the
new mother in her bedchamber with friends and servants in attendance.31The underside of the tray shows a urinating child who, according to the explanatory inscription, signifies fertility and good
luck.32This kind of image was far from unique in RenaissanceItaly,
and should be remembered when we look at an even more familiar
kind of image of a nude male infant, and one that has received a great
deal of attentionin recent scholarship. Not only the infant Christ displays his genitals in Renaissanceart, however, but so too do the In-
30Cassoni would seem to invite or require consideration of marriage and the family,
but only recently have art historians (and at least one historian) begun to respond to
that invitation. In her monograph on the leading cassone painter of fifteenth-century
Florence, Apollonio di Giovanni, Ellen Callman did not deal with marriage or with family history; but in a more recent article she has begun to do so, suggesting that a change
in subject-matter in mid-fifteenth-century cassoni may be related to changing feelings
about marriage between young brides and older husbands. See Callman, "The Growing Threat to Marital Bliss." The historian AnneJacobson Schutte has considered the
role of women as reflected in cassoni and deschi da parto, painted trays presented to
new mothers (discussed also by Callman in her book and article) in " 'Trionfo delle
donne.' " Brucia Witthoft has also presented useful information about Renaissance
weddings in "Marriage Rituals and Marriage Chests."
31Forthe desco in New York, the New York Historical Society, see Watson, "A
Desco da Parto." According to Callman, deschi were not commissioned for weddings
but only for births; they were gifts to new mothers, not to brides. See her "Growing
Threat."
32Watson, "A Desco da Parto," p. 4 and n. I for the text of the inscription.
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fant John the Baptist, the Innocenti, those first (male) martyrs for
Christ, and innumerable (male) putti as well. And related to this effulgence is the fact that nude female infants are conspicuous by their
absence from Renaissance art-no cassone or descoda parto would
wish a female baby on the parents-and while the circumcisedor uncircumcisedpenises of male nudes were often carefully distinguished
in art, the first biologically accurate depiction of an adult female
nude's vulva was the Diana by Houdon, a work done in I780-and
then consideredshocking precisely becauseof its physiological exactness.33
In his study of the Sexualityof Christ,Leo Steinberg has given primacy to the visual imagery of numerous compositions in which the
Infant'sgenitals are displayed in order to demonstrate his humanity
by means of his sex.34Caroline Bynum has recently replied with an
essay emphasizing not the sexuality (or sex) of Christ but his suffering: as her numerous literary sources demonstrate, and as Steinberg
had also noted, Christ's penis was understood as the locus of the first
shedding of blood for salvation, in the Circumcision.35To be sure,
their arguments arenot mutually exclusive. For example, a sculpture
by Baccio da Montelupo, copying Desiderio da Settignano, represents the Christ Child standing and blessing and heroically nude (Fig.
9). And in his left hand, held at waist level, he grasps the crown of
thorns and three nails, instruments of the Passion, juxtaposed (not
casually, I think) with his genitals. That the blood shed in the Child's
Circumcision adumbratesthat of the Man's Crucifixion is a familiar
equation, given clear and succinct visualization in this figure.36No
knowledgable Medieval or Renaissanceobserver would have forgot-
33Forthe statue, see Arnason, The Sculpture of Houdon. If there are earlier biologically correct women in art, at least on a large scale, neither Arnason nor I know them.
Regarding the sex of putti, n.b. Titian's homoerotic Venus Worship (Madrid, Prado),
populated by demonstrative male putti, who became male and female in Rubens' copy
(Stockholm, National Museum).
34Steinberg identifies his paintings as his primary source on p. 23 and passim.
35Bynum, "The Body of Christ."
36And discussed at length with reference to other images in Steinberg, Sexuality of
Christ, pp. 48-65. The Franciscan dictum "nudus sequi nudum Christum," quoted by
Steinberg on p. 34, alludes in fact to Francis' identification with Christ naked on the
Cross. Hence the Christ's nudity is once again associated with his suffering. See my
volume, Spirituality in Conflict, Chap. 2.
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FIG.9-Baccio da Montelupo afterDesiderio da Settignano, InfantChristwithInstrumentsof the Passion,Prato, Museo dell 'Opera del Duomo; photo, Alinari-Art Resource
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ten this theological truth. His humanity, manifest in his penis, is
what made possible Christ's death and hence our salvation. The display of Christ's genitals does not signify only the sexual aspect of his
humanation, however: it alludes to all that is implied in his identity as
the Second Adam. (But this does not answer the question of why the
Christ Child is not merely nude but heroically so, and why his nudity is mostly an attribute of images of the Infant rather than the
Man. These are issues that require further consideration.) At the
same time, Renaissance beholders were being shown something
more than this familiartheology, something perhapsnot discussed in
texts but indisputably representedin some, not all, images of the naked Christ. Just as some ideas described in texts do not find visual
expression in art-such as the womanly qualitiesperceived inJesusnot all ideas visualized in art are or were verbalizedin texts.37Sometimes an image illustrateswhat cannot or will not be describedby artist or beholder. And, as Klapisch-Zuber reminds us, "an effigy is
never innocent when the person looking at it knows how to put the
right questions to it."38
A text may exhort or inspire the readeror listener. Images, however, are capable of transferring virtue and force to the user or
viewer. (Once again, one is reminded of the nude male infants on the
undersidesof deschi or the inside of cassone lids.) For this reason, the
cleric Dominici had advised mothers to display for their children's
sake depictions of the Baby Jesus or of the infant Baptist: "Let the
child see himself mirrored. . . ."39Not only children, however, but
adults were to profit from such images, in particularsculptures representingthe Child: thus women seek contact "with sacredimages in
order to have immediate access to the child Jesus."40The language
that was used to describe use of these images is an admixture of the
37Bynum's emphasis on the imagery of Christ as food is depicted quite explicitly in
images of the Child emerging from the chalice: he is literally the Eucharist, whose
body and blood the faithful are invited to drink.
38"Holy Dolls," p. 3I9.
39Quoted and discussed by Klapisch-Zuber. See also Goffen, "Icon and Vision," p.
503n. 84, and for the display of such images in bedrooms, p. 512.
40Klapisch-Zuber, "Holy Dolls," p. 326.
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spiritualand the sensual:and as women (nuns and wives) called such
images their child, men (clerics and laymen) identified the Virgin as
their mother.41
Images, again unlike texts, are inherently magical. They may
hear, speak, or even move, like the Cross of San Damiano that heard
Francis'prayerand answered him, or the doll representingthe Christ
Child in the manger at Greccio which seemed to come to life in the
saint's arms. And familiarity with sacred images makes possible the
understandingof visions that come in dreaming:only because of the
image seen waking can the faithful recognize its model in their
dreams.42Images may function, similarly, to perpetuateand to elevate the importance of secular subjects that they depict. But one
problem, as I see it, is that in many cases, probably a majority of
cases, these objects representing "female" themes of sex, marriage,
and the family were commissioned by men: male patrons were footing the bill and sometimes-not infrequently-determining the subject matter as well. So if the scenes representedcommemorate sexuality (male or female, human or divine), or the "role reversal"
inherent in scenes of marriage and childbirth, which place "women
on top," albeit only temporarily, then they do so either with the approbation or connivance of the displaced male (both patron and artist) or despite him, as it were.43Did Quattrocento male patrons and
artists sometimes act against their own apparent self-interest and
againsttheir common perceptions about sexuality and marriage?Or
do these objects operate on a double level, as it were, representing
what is feared (female domination, for example, or the vulnerability
of Christ's sex) not as a threat but as a protection, as an apotropaic
safeguard,so to speak?(In other cases-notably male childrenin cassone painting-images are surely intended as a guarantor of the
beholder-owner's success.) We are perhaps still some way from
knowing what these images of God and man and woman signified or
implied to the Renaissanceviewer, what dreams, carnalor spiritual,
41Ibid., p. 327.
42Vauchez, La Saintete en occident,pp. 102-103 and 526-29.
43See Schutte, "Trionfo delle donne"; and Natalie Zemon Davis, "Women on
Top."
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they visualized. Sometimes these dreams never became reality, but
sometimes, perhaps, being realized in art, they helped to clarify the
imaginations and longings of their first viewers, and in this way contributed to the fuller realization of the potentialities of human relationships, the relationshipsof individuals to each other and to God.
Thanks to recent scholarshipby art historians and historians, we are
on the way to understanding the historical and psychological processes by which this may have happened
DUKE UNIVERSITY
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