Indecent Bodies in Early Modern Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 (= Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700) (coedited by Fabian Jonietz, Mandy Richter & Alison G. Stewart) (original) (raw)
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Indecency-the polar opposite of propriety, appropriateness, respectability, decorum-has played a central role in our understanding of Early Modern cultural norms since the beginning of art history as an academic field in the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the concept of indecency was fundamental to historical and contemporary discourses that attempted to balance social limits on indecorous behaviour and images. At the same time, the appeal of such visual imagery, the attraction of graphic depictions of bodies and their actions, resulted in conflicting responses on the part of viewers. Historically, decency and indecency played defining roles in both the idea of the 'Renaissance' and its characteristics. The nineteenth-century view of this period-notably shaped by Jacob Burckhardt and his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)-not surprisingly saw the Renaissance as the birthplace of modern individualism, and with it ideas of the idealised, the classical, 'clean' beauty, and striving for grace. 1 Since the 1950s, the idea of the European Renaissance north and south of the Alps has expanded to include the struggle between decorous and indecorous elements, a fact acknowledged within art history, cultural studies, and philology following Eugenio Battisti's L'Antirinascimento ('The Anti-Renaissance', 1964), the groundbreaking work of Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World (1965, English translation 1984), and the general reassessment of sixteenth-century Mannerism. 2 The alleged individualism of Renaissance men and women led Stephen Greenblatt (Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1980) and the large field of studies addressing selffashioning to acknowledge that being socially improper or indecent had become, in fact, equally important to individualism for Early Modern society and courts.
Considerations on the Human Body in European Art from Ancient Times to Present Day
Anastasis. Research in Medieval Culture and Art, 2019
The present considerations on the human body tried to place the exploration of the topic in its radically cultural dimension, hence the references to the body being already addressed to the anthropomorphic, descriptive, symbolic sign completely emerged in artistic exercise. We outlined artistic findings from old times to contemporaneity wherever the motive of the human body was central in this selection; furthermore, the nude has made and still makes the subject of convergent discourses on its representation, intensity or weakening of its capacity for signifying. Land of inexhaustible negotiation between nature and culture, available to primitivism, always found again as more sophisticated, transformed by the demands imposed throughout history, ideals and illusions, the body imposes itself on cultural conscience as an irreducible challenge. This paper is consecrated to the nude and aims at overviewing a large series of investigations from European art on the topic. I believe that from more ancient times to contemporaneity, the human body proved to be an excellent landmark in the approach of any artist; moreover, this seduction will continue to exert itself on the upcoming artists, irrespective of the future's artistic tendencies. The fact that, in time, the human figure has been an extremely important motive for the artistic laboratory determined me to choose this topic; in addition, throughout the article, I have attempted to prove the interest in the nude, recalling the most important tendencies and manifestation from old times to contemporaneity. In this approach, we started from the finding, which has actually marked many years of my creation, that the human body may show itself in a sacred and profane hypostasis; as a result, this study was structured to account for the two dimensions. Along the documentation and drafting, I realized that, in fact, the human body can only be sacred even in its nude hypostasis. The purpose of the present paper is far from exhausting the problematic of the human body; its aim is to draw attention to the importance of the topic. The concerns on this topic have taken various forms throughout art history. We brought into play the significance of the human body in Old Greeks quoting Thucydides who argued that the difference between Greeks and barbarians was marked in a civilising way since nudity had become the rule in the Olympic Games; I wrote on Christian art during the first centuries AD, then about the art of the Middle Ages which brought profound changes to the
The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art: An Introduction 1
2017
Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other early founders of the modern discipline of art history hailed the idealized nude-developed in ancient Greece, adopted by the Romans, and subject to imitation and revival ever since-as a superior, "classical," distinctively Western approach to representing the human body. 2 Such presumptions about the classical nude inform the traditional art historical canon, coloring judgments about other traditions and societies, and distorting our view even of certain eras of Western art history, particularly the Middle Ages. 3 In spite of some exceptional studies to be discussed below, the tradition of representing the unclothed body in the Middle Ages, when it is acknowledged at all, has been most often reduced to what is considered a typical medieval Christian ascetic rejection of the body. 4 This simplification is frankly astonishing when one considers the complex, multivalent and inventive iconographic contexts in which full or partial nakedness appears in medieval art: biblical stories featuring Adam and Eve, Susannah and the Elders, David and Bathsheba, the rape of the Levite's wife, the nakedness of Noah, and the Baptism of Christ, among others; the transcendent suffering body in representations of the lives of the saints and Christ; additional narratives that feature holy figures like Martin and Francis divesting themselves of clothes; the lactating Virgin; baptism scenes; birth scenes; bath scenes; medical miniatures; Sheela-na-gigs; illuminations in legal manuscripts addressing cases of impotence, rape, and adultery; Pygmalion's statue; Venus and other "pagan idols;" demons; hybrid creatures; anthropomorphized sexual organs worn as badges; souls; the dead; the monstrous races; lovers in romances; personifications of Luxuria, and more. While medievalists have addressed many of these still understudied themes, the sharp focus of individual studies has not necessarily been conducive to broader conclusions. As a result, accounts that treat the nude in medieval art continue to do so in reference to a traditional art historical narrative that only allows nudity in medieval art a narrow range of meaning.
On Bodies and Images in the Middle Ages
DigitAR - Revista Digital de Arqueologia, Arquitectura e Artes, 2015
The International Symposium "O Corpo através da imagem", held in Coimbra in October 2013, addressed the study of body representation throughout History from a multidisciplinary viewpoint. Responding to the Symposium’s scientific challenges, the objective of this paper was to establish a theoretical, general, and global framework on the body in the Middle Ages. The determinants of the body, its uses and functions and its depiction in the medieval image are thus the main issues approached in this study.
Bodies on Romanesque sculptures often protrude into the space of the viewer to evoke a real presence in a manner unparalleled by any other medium available to medieval artists. 1 This power extends to figures that are much smaller than life-size, such as the many carved bodies that extend and twist away from capital baskets to assert a salient physicality. Although many medieval authors objected to sculpture on the grounds that it carried the stain of idolatry, 2 the power associated with this medium could be put to the service of decidedly Christian ends. The fleshy forms comprising the nearly life-size personification of lust (luxuria) on the south portal of St-Pierre at Moissac .1) provoke a visceral response that is augmented through the inclusion of snakes biting her breasts and a toad gnawing her genitalia. More than an ideogrammic admonition against lust, this figure, in its robust corporeality, can be seen to elicit a dense nexus of associations in the mind of the medieval viewer, including, among others, sexual desire, sin, penance, and the hope for salvation. 3 Similar moralizing agendas, aimed at bolstering the pursuit of the religious life, have been identified for other contemporary carvings of women, including a Salomé from La Daurade, Toulouse, and an Eve from Autun. 4 Whereas the female body in Romanesque sculpture has generated limited scholarly interest, discussions of unclothed male bodies have primarily consisted of passing remarks, more cursory observations than sustained analyses. This virtual silence cannot be attributed to a small sample of surviving works, for scores of unclothed male bodies feature prominently at Romanesque sites across Europe. The present remarks might thus be construed as something of a corrective, but my principal aim here goes beyond establishing a corpus of nudes, female and male. I am interested in considering how the precocious appearance of accomplished male nudes might deepen our understanding of the motivations for the meteoric ascendancy of monumental stone sculpture as an artistic medium during SHERRY C.M. LINDQUIST.indb 65
MORALISING NUDES: Eroticism in Dutch Mannerism of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century
Before the turn of the twenty-first century, the role of eroticism in Dutch art and the purpose of its images has largely being neglected. However, in their time these representations of nudity and salacious images and the subjects they implied were often cited in contemporary writings, songbooks and farces. The authors usually attributed a moralising meaning to them so as to ‘justify’ their appearance. This dissertation will consider the role of eroticism in the art of the Dutch Mannerists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It will focus on the paintings, engravings and drawings between 1585 and 1630 from the artists working in Haarlem and Utrecht. The adoption and development of this phenomenon is examined in chapter one. Chapter two looks at eroticism in works with a mythological subject. Finally, chapter three deals with the salacious images with a biblical or religious subject. Subsequently the role of these images in the oeuvre of these artists and in society will be revealed. The role of eroticism in biblical and religious subjects has not been analysed extensively, this dissertation aims to enrich existing research. This dissertation draws on a contextual and object-based approach in which primary published educational books, farces and songbooks from the Dutch seventeenth century as well as more recent secondary sources are used to construct an argument. Images from the Netherlands Institute of History archive will prove insight to the extent of the role of eroticism in Dutch Mannerism.
The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, Ed. with David Hillman
Examines how the body - its organs, limbs, viscera - was represented in the literature and culture of early modern Europe. How and why did 16th and 17th century medical, religious, and literary texts portray the body part by part, rather than as an entity? And what does this view of the human body tell us about society's view of part and whole, of individual and universal in the early modern period? As this volume demonstrates, the symbolics of body parts challenges our assumptions about "the body" as a fundamental Renaissance image of self, society, and nation. The book presents work by: Nancy Vickers on corporeal fragments; Peter Stallybrass on the foot; Marjorie Garber on joints; Stephen Greenblatt on bodily marking and mutilation; Gail Kern Paster on the nervous system; Michael Schoenfeldt on the belly; Jeffrey Masten on the anus; Katherine Park on the clitoris; Kathryn Schwartz on the breast; Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky on the eye; Katherine Rowe on the hands; Scott Stevens on the heart and brain; Carla Mazzio on the tongue; and David Hillman on the entrails.An examination of how the body--its organs, limbs, and viscera--were represented in the literature and culture of early modern Europe. This provocative volume demonstrates, the symbolism of body parts challenge our assumptions about "the body" as a fundamental Renaissance image of self, society, and nation. This book was awarded The English Association Beatrice White Book Prize in 1999.