The Italian Renaissance Nude amended (II)

‚…the Renaissance… must have wished to banish allegory,

which hid or disguised the real figures of the Gods.‘

Seznec J (1, p.96)

‘…the most famous presentation of sexual positions in the Renaissance…’ is summarized by Jill Burke in her monograph ‚The Italian Renaissance Nude‘ (2, p.114-117), giving due reference to the first meticulously explored account in 300 pages with the witty title ‘Taking Positions’ by Bette Talvacchia (3). The story could be a topic for a Dan Brown thriller (4). The second post of this series (5) presents a simple network visualization of people involved in the story during the first part of the 16^th century, with a few comments on issues. A forthcoming third post will highlight the afterlife of the ‘infamous’ set of engravings, their many imitations and alterations, later better known as ‘The Loves of the Gods’ or ‘The Lascivie’.

Map of all people involved in ‚I Modi‘ and the ‚Loves of the Gods‘ during the first half of the 16th century (6)

The original drawings of the series known as ‘I Modi’ are lost and are traditionally attributed to Giulio ROMANO, the heir of the workshop of RAFFAELLO after his sudden death in 1520. That should not mean that they were necessarily created after 1520. Given the innovative and challenging content of the series and knowing RAFFAELLO’s control of all ‘concetti’ developed in his workshop, RAFFAELLO’s commitment should not be excluded (7). But unlike with other works by his assistants, mostly described ‘after RAFFAELLO’ even when there are no drawings or designs by him attested, art historians never mention his name when the ‘Positions’ are discussed. A case of ‘art historical prudishness’? how could the „most famous and most loved“ master of the High Renaissance have been involved in such a scandalous project ! (8).
Another issue is the relation between the 9 fragments of engravings attributed to Agostino VENEZIANO, dated c1510-1520, and the few preserved engravings by Marcantonio RAIMONDI, dated 1524 (9).
The notorious poet Pietro Aretino stayed in Rome from 1517 to 1524 and was a friend of RAFFAELLO’s workshop. Thus no surprise that his sixteen ‚Sonetti lussuriosi‘ were inspired by the drawings/engravings of  ‚I Modi‘. Unfortunately, the original edition of 1527 is lost and the one surviving copy is the so-called Toscanini volume with crude woodcut images after RAIMONDI’s engravings, made by an anonymous 16th century artist (10).
Meanwhile, RAFFAELLO’s workshop was disrupted during the terrible ‚Sack of Rome‘ which started in May 1527. Baviera, the trusted workshop-manager of RAFFAELLO, was still active and took the initative to make profit again for the workshop. He published a new series of twenty erotic engravings, inspired by ‚I Modi‘ and designed by younger artists of the workshop and engraved by Gian Giacomo CARAGLIO.  However, in order to avoid censorship, the ‚humans‘ were now replaced by mythological figures and an accompanying subscript under each image made it clear that the series was about the ‚Loves of the Gods‘. Some of these images were soon adapted as illustrations for a French publication of anatomical description of the human female body (11).

The next post will describe the lengthy afterlife of both the ‚Sonetti lussuriosi‘ and the ‚Loves of the Gods‘.

  NOTES

• (1) Seznec J (1961) ‚The survival of the pagan Gods – The mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and art‘. Harper Torchbooks, New York.
• (2) Burke J (2018) ‘The Italian Renaissance Nude’. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 2018, 240 pp.
• (3) Talvacchia B (1999) ‘Taking Positions – On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture’. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 302 pp.
• (4) The story includes destruction and confiscation by the Papal authorities of all drawings, copper plates and prints, imprisonment of the engraver, released after intervention of friends, a failed murder, many popular imitations in Italy and France, and the allegedly discovery of an original set of engravings in a Mexican monastery by an obscure adventurer-artist in the 19^th.
• (5) See post of November 4, 2018 ‘The Italian Renaissance Nude amended (I): how many female nudes were painted ?’
• (6) Map created with Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) (version  October 8, 2015 / 3.3.0.), an Open Source project based at Tufts University. Its Gallery includes two Featured Maps of K. Bender:  TIZIANO’s ‚Venus with the Musician‘ (masterworks and their successors) and WATTEAU’s ‚Embarquement pour Cythère‘ (masterworks, their predecessors and their successors).
• (7) About the innovative aspect, Talvacchia writes, in accordance with Seznec’s vision (1): ‘…an important part of Giulio (ROMANO)’s adaptation…for I Modi was to exchange the mythological protagonists with humans.’ (3, p.32). Concerning the challenging aspect, she points out that I Modi ‘reverses the typical gender roles in its portrayal of female initiative’ (3, p.44).
• (8) Talvacchia reports about a bibliographical reference of 1557 where RAFFAELLO’s autorship is discussed (3, p.111) and refers to an ‘erotic’ drawing of RAFFAELLO or ROMANO (3, p.139 fig. 34). One can also mentionRAFFAELLO’s ‘erotic life’ as described by Giorgio Vasari, his first biographer: he was ‘very loving and affectionate to women’, needed continuously sex (diletti carnali), was addicted to ‘i piaceri amorosi’ and died suddenly ‘… fra l’altre disordinò più del solito…’411-430 in ‘Le Vite dei più celebri pittori, scultori e architetti – Volume secondo’ Fratelli Melita, Le Spezia, 1987.
• (9) The work attributed to VENEZIANO is in the British Museum, number 1972,U.1306-1314. Talvacchia (3, p.24 fig.5) attributes it to the circle of RAIMONDI.  The preserved engravings of RAIMONDI of ‘position 1’ are in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, another one somewhere unknown, a free copy in the British Museum and one of ‘position 11’ is in the Albertina in Vienna (Talvacchia 3, p.22-3 fig.2, 3, 4 & 7).
• (10) Talvacchia presents the Toscanini Volume (now in a private collection in Geneva) completely, including the woodcuts with the Italian verses and her own excellent translation in English (…trying “to lessen the unrelieved coarseness and lack of imagination in Anglo-Saxon four-letter words…”) (3, xiii and p.5 fig 1 and appendix B).
• (11) ‘De dissection partium corporis humani’ of Charles Estienne, published in Paris in 1545, is fully online e.g. at the S. National Library of Medicine

Link to the original article here.