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Indecent Bodies in Early Modern Visual Culture

Indecent Bodies in Early Modern Visual Culture

The life-like depiction of the body became a central interest and defining characteristic of the European Early Modern period that coincided with the establishment of which images of the body were to be considered ‘decent’ and representable, and which disapproved, censored, or prohibited. Simultaneously, artists and the public became increasingly interested in the depiction of specific body parts or excretions. This book explores the concept of indecency and its relation to the human body across drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, and texts. The ten essays investigate questions raised by such objects about practices and social norms regarding the body, and they look at the particular function of those artworks within this discourse. The heterogeneous media, genres, and historical contexts north and south of the Alps studied by the authors demonstrate how the alleged indecency clashed with artistic intentions and challenges traditional paradigms of the historiography of Early Modern visual culture.
  • Cover
  • Table of Contents
  • Indecent Bodies in Early Modern Visual Culture: An Introduction
    • Fabian Jonietz, Mandy Richter, Alison G. Stewart
  • 1. Taste, Lust, and the Male Body: Sexual Representations in Early Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe
    • Alison G. Stewart
  • 2. Private Viewings: The Frankfurt Context of Sebald Beham’s Die Nacht
    • Miriam Hall Kirch
  • 3. To Show or Not to Show? Marcantonio Raimondi and the Representation of Female Pubic Hair
    • Mandy Richter
  • 4. Treating Bodily Impurities: Skin, Art, and Medicine
    • Romana Sammern
  • 5. Indecent Exposure and Honourable Uncovering in Renaissance Portraits of Women
    • Bette Talvacchia
  • 6. Lust in Translation: Agency, Sexuality, and Gender Configuration in Pauwels Franck’s Allegories of Love
    • Ricardo De Mambro Santos
  • 7. ‘So This Guy Walks into a Forest…:’ Obscenity, Humour, Sex, and the Equine Body in Hans Baldung’s Horses in a Forest Woodcuts (1534)
    • Pia F. Cuneo
  • 8. Indecent Creativity and the Tropes of Human Excreta
    • Fabian Jonietz
  • 9. ‘It All Turns to Shit’ – The Land of Cockaigne in Sixteenth-Century German Woodcuts
    • Susanne Meurer
  • 10. Noëls and Bodily Fluids: The Business of Low-Country Ceremonial Fountains
    • Catherine Emerson
  • Index
  • List of Illustrations
    • Figure 0.1: Isaac Cruikshank, Indecency, coloured etching, 1799, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, PC 3 – 1799 – Indecency (A size) [P&P], https://www.loc.gov/item/2003652525/.
    • Figure 0.2: Master of the Hours of Henri II, Francis I as Minerva, parchment on oak, c. 1545, 234 × 134 mm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Estampes, Rés. Na 255.
    • Figure 0.3: Hans Liefrinck after Leonardo da Vinci, Two Grotesque Heads, engraving, 1538, 115 × 157 mm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 2008.577.3, Gift of Leo Steinberg, 2008.
    • Figure 0.4: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Old Man and his Grandson, tempera on wood, c. 1490, 62.7 × 46.3 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. RF 266, RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Franck Raux, https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010064987.
    • Figure 0.5: German painter, The Giant Anton Frank with the Dwarf Thomele, canvas, end of sixteenth century, 266.8 × 162.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthisto­risches Museum, inv. Gemäldegalerie, 8299 © KHM-Museumsverband.
    • Figure 0.6: Master of the Crucifixion of Kempten, detail of Crucifixion, panel painting, c. 1460/70, Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, loan of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich, inv. Gm879.
    • Figure 0.7: Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Willibald Pirckheimer, silverpoint drawing, c. 1503, 21.1 × 15 cm, Berlin, SMB, Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 24623, © Kupferstichkabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
    • Figure 1.1: Sebald Beham, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 14-I), engraving, 1526, 52 × 52 mm (sheet), Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig, Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen, inv. h-s-beham-ab3-0013.
    • Figure 1.2: Sebald Beham, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 14-state III), engraving, 1526, Ø 53 mm, © Kupferstich­kabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. 423-4.
    • Figure 1.3: Monogrammist AC, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 14b), etching, c.­1526 – 1550, 88 × 84 mm (sheet), Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. DG1937/429.
    • Figure 1.4: Monogrammist WI, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 14c), engraving, Ø 58 mm (plate), Kunstsammlungen der Fürsten zu Waldburg-Wolfegg.
    • Figure 1.5: Sebald Beham (?), copy of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 14a), engraving, 1526, Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. DG1936/1305 (with added colour).
    • Figure 1.6: Sebald Beham, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 15-IIII), engraving, 1544, 81 × 56 mm, © Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. 424-4.
    • Figure 1.7: Sebald Beham (?), copy of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (P. 15b-II), engraving, 1544, 85 × 54 mm, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen, inv. h-s-beham-ab3-0015.
    • Figure 1.8: Sebald Beham, Death and the Lascivious Couple (P. 153-I), engraving, 1529, 82 × 49 mm (sheet), Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen, inv. h-s-beham-ab3-0155.
    • Figure 1.9: Sebald Beham, Death and the Lascivious Couple (P. 153-II), engraving, 1529, 82 × 49 mm (plate), Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. DG1930/1175.
    • Figure 1.10: Sebald Beham, Death and the Lascivious Couple (P. 153-II), engraving, 1529, 82 × 49 mm (plate), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-H-1040, on loan from the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten.
    • Figure 2.1: Sebald Beham, Die Nacht, P. 154, engraving, 1548, state III, 110 × 78 mm (plate), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-OB-4601.
    • Figure 2.2: Sebald Beham, Nude Girl with a Dog, P. 213, engraving, n.d., Ø 53 mm (plate), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-OB-10.925.
    • Figure 2.3: Gian Jacopo Caraglio, perhaps after Perino del Vaga, Mercury, Aglauros, and Herse, from Loves of the Gods, T. 14, engraving, n.d., state I, 211 × 134 mm (trimmed), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-OB-35.615.
    • Figure 2.4: Cornelis Bos after Michelangelo, Leda and the Swan, engraving, n.d., 302 × 413 mm (sheet), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 57.658.153.
    • Figure 2.5: Sebald Beham, Expulsion from Paradise, P. 8, engraving, 1543, 82 × 58 mm (plate), Williamstown, Mass., Clark Art Institute, inv. 1990.16.
    • Figure 2.6: Conrad Faber von Kreuznach, Portrait of Justinian von Holzhausen and Anna Fürstenberg, mixed media on linden panel, 1536, 68.6 × 98.5 cm, Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum, inv. 1729.
    • Figure 2.7: Heinrich Aldegrever, A Couple of Lovers Seated, engraving, 1529, Ø 52 mm, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection, inv. 1943.3.284.
    • Figure 3.1: Marcantonio Raimondi, Venus Wringing her Hair, engraving, 1506, 214 × 152 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 29.44.13, anonymous gift, 1929.
    • Figure 3.2: Marcantonio Raimondi, Venus Wringing her Hair, engraving, 1506, 215 × 150 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-OB-11.950.
    • Figure 3.3: Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, engraving, 1504, 251 × 200 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 19.73.1, Fletcher Fund, 1919.
    • Figure 3.4: Marcantonio Raimondi, Adam, pen and brown ink on light tan paper, 1505–1509, 195 × 109 mm, Princeton University Art Museum, inv. X1945-47, gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
    • Figure 3.5: Marcantonio Raimondi, Young Man Protected by Fortune, engraving, 147 × 91 mm, Yale University Art Gallery, inv. 1941.248, gift of the Associates of Fine Art.
    • Figure 3.6: Marcantonio Raimondi, Young Man Protected by Fortune, engraving, 148 × 91 mm, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, inv. PN 2256 © su concessione del Ministero della Cultura – Archivio Fotografico Direzione regionale Musei dell’Emilia-Romagna.
    • Figure 3.7: Marcantonio Raimondi, Mars, Venus, and Cupid, engraving, 1508, 298 × 209 mm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 17.37.302, gift of Henry Walters, 1917.
    • Figure 3.8: Details of figs. 3.1 and 3.2 (Venus Wringing her Hair), fig. 3.5 (Young Man Protected by Fortune), and fig. 3.7 (Mars, Venus, and Cupid).
    • Figure 4.1: French or Italian, Comb, ivory, paint and gilding, fifteenth or sixteenth century, 88 × 129 × 4 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 17.190.245.
    • Figure 4.2: French painter, detail of Venus with a Mirror, oil on wood, sixteenth century, 54 × 34 cm, Mâcon, Musée des Ursulines, inv. A.700, photo © Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
    • Figure 4.3: Lavinia Fontana, Hieronymus Mercurialis with an edition of Vesalius’ ‘On the Fabric of the Human Body’ (1542), oil on canvas, 130.8 × 97.1 cm, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, acc. no. 37.1106, photo © Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
    • Figure 4.4: Giambattista della Porta (John Baptista Porta), Natural Magick (London: Thomas Young and Samuel Speed, 1658), title page with author portrait, London, Wellcome Collection, photo Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
    • Figure 5.1: Domenico Tintoretto, Lady Covering her Breast, oil on canvas, 1580 – 1590, 65 × 51 cm, Madrid, Prado Museum, inv. P000384, © Museo del Prado.
    • Figure 5.2: Domenico Tintoretto, Lady Revealing her Breast, oil on canvas, 1580 – 1590, 62 × 55.6 cm, Madrid, Prado Museum, inv. P000382, © Museo del Prado.
    • Figure 5.3: Domenico Tintoretto, Portrait of a Courtesan, oil on canvas, 1590s, 100 × 84 cm, Venice, Private Collection.
    • Figure 5.4: Mores italiae, ‘Veronica Franco’, water-colour drawing on paper, 1575, 185 × 130 mm, Beinecke MS 457, fol. 6, New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library.
    • Figure 5.5: Giacomo Franco, ‘A Noblewoman’, from Habiti delle Donne Venetiane, engraving and woodcut, c.1591–1610, 280 × 210 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 34.68, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934.
    • Figure 5.6: Giacomo Franco, ‘A Famous Courtesan’, from Habiti delle Donne Venetiane, engraving and woodcut, c.1591–1610, 280 × 210 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 34.68, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934.
    • Figure 5.7: Mores italiae, ‘A Bride’, water-colour drawing on paper, 1575, 185 × 130 mm, Beinecke MS 457, fol. 24, New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library.
    • Figure 6.1: Pauwels Franck, Allegories of Love (Love), oil on canvas, c. 1585, 159 × 257.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
    • Figure 6.2: Pauwels Franck, Allegories of Love (Lust), oil on canvas, c. 1585, 158.7 × 257.3 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
    • Figure 6.3: Pauwels Franck, Allegories of Love (Oblivion), oil on canvas, c. 1585, 169 × 260 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
    • Figure 6.4: Pauwels Franck, Allegories of Love (Punishment), oil on canvas, c. 1585, 160 × 260 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
    • Figure 6.5: Pauwels Franck, Allegories of Love (Punishment), detail of the suicidal woman, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
    • Figure 6.6: Jacopo Caraglio after Perino del Vaga, Jupiter and Antiope, engraving, 1527, 211 × 135 mm, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, inv. 6749.
    • Figure 6.7: Jean Jollat after Étienne de la Rivière, Dissection of Female Genitalia, engraving, from Charles Estienne, De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1545), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 42
    • Figure 7.1: Hans Baldung, Horses in a Forest: Stallion Approaching a Mare, woodcut, 1534, 227 × 335 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum, acc. no. 22.67.58, Rogers Fund, 1922.
    • Figure 7.2: Hans Baldung, Horses in a Forest: Stallion Ejaculating, woodcut, 1534, 228.6 × 333.4 mm, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund (60.4)
    • Figure 7.3: Hans Baldung, Horses in a Forest: Horses Fighting, woodcut, 1534, 218 × 326 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum, acc. no. 33.54.2, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933.
    • Figure 8.1: Left: François Chauveau (attr.) after Cornelis Bos, detail of Triumph of Bacchus, engraving, mid-seventeenth century, 315 × 880 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-7421; right: Johann Theodor de Bry after Cornelis Bos, detail of Triumph of Bac
    • Figure 8.2: Virgil Solis after Peter Flötner (?), details of the Triumph of Bacchus featured on the Holzschuher-Pokal, engravings, mid-sixteenth century, 55 × 245 mm, 58 × 245 mm, and 58 × 246 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-54.647, 54.648 and 54.649.
    • Figure 8.3: Sebastian Stoskopff, Still Life, oil on canvas, 1625/1630 (?), 52 × 73 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. RF 1981-18.
    • Figure 8.4: Jacques Callot, Squatting Peasant, from the series Capricci di varie figure, etching, 1617, 53 × 79 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 40.52.52, Rogers Fund, by exchange, 1940.
    • Figure 8.5: Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert after Adriaen de Weert, detail of Hypocrisy, engraving, c. 1572–1576, 206 × 121 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-BI-6577.
    • Figure 8.6: Red und wider red Salomo[n]is un[d] marcolfÿ (Augsburg: Johann Schobser, 1490), woodcut on fol. 22 recto, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00026758-9.
    • Figure 8.7: Sebald Beham, The Little Buffoon, engraving (state II), 1542, 46 × 81 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 17.3.467, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917.
    • Figure 8.8: Maerten van Heemskerck, detail of Triumph of Bacchus, oil on oak wood, c. 1536/37 (?), 56 × 106.6 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. Gemäldegalerie 990, photo © Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
    • Figure 8.9: Johannes Sadeler the Elder after Christoph Schwartz, detail of Warning Against Venereal Disease, engraving, c. 1588/95, 241 × 305 mm, London, Wellcome Library, inv. 524739i.
    • Figure 8.10: Left: Les dix premiers livres de l’Iliade d’Homère prince des poetes, transl. by Hugues Salel (Paris: Jehan, 1545), title page, woodcut, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10195380-0; right: Guillaume de La Perriere, La
    • Figure 8.11: Taylors Physicke has purged the Divel. Or, The Divell has got a squirt… (London [?], 1641), detail of the frontispiece, woodcut and movable letter type, private collection.
    • Figure 8.12: Gregorio Leti, Critica…sopra le sorti, siano lotterie, ed. by Pierre Mortier and Jean Louis De Lorme (Paris 1697, falsely labelled ‘A Amsterdam, Chez les Amis de L’Auteur’), detail of the title engraving (Bernard Picart?), 120 × 140 mm, Amste
    • Figure 8.13: Richard Livesay (?) after William Hogarth, The complicated R___n, etching, 204 × 149 mm, 1794 (design dated c. 1734), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 32.35(241), Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932.
    • Figure 9.1: Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fat Kitchen, engraving, 1563, 210 × 293 mm (sheet), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1526.
    • Figure 9.2: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, oil on panel, 1567, 52 × 78 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 8940.
    • Figure 9.3: Anonymous, The Promised Land of Cockaigne, woodcut printed from eight blocks, 1560–1580, 63.4 × 101 cm, New York, New York Public Library, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, inv. 94885.
    • Figure 9.3a: Detail of fig. 9.3 with cross cheese and male and female fruit growing on trees.
    • Figure 9.3b: Detail of fig. 9.3 with the revellers’ table.
    • Figure 9.4: Anonymous, Hans Little Pretty, hand-coloured woodcut, 1520s, 390 × 276 mm, Gotha, Stiftung Friedrichstein, inv. 40,19, © Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha – aus den Sammlungen der Herzog von Sachsen Coburg und Gotha’schen Stiftung für Kunst
    • Figure 9.3c: Detail of fig. 9.3 with the queen of Cockaigne and recent arrivals.
    • Figure 9.3d: Detail of fig. 9.3 with craftsmen, peasants, burghers and beggars approaching the buckwheat mountain.
    • Figure 9.5: Peter Flötner, Escutcheon of Cockaigne, hand-coloured woodcut, 1536, 285 × 395 mm, Gotha, Stiftung Friedrichstein, inv. 39,69, © Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha – aus den Sammlungen der Herzog von Sachsen Coburg und Gotha’schen Stiftung fü
    • Figure 9.6: Peter Flötner, Fool carrying Excrement, woodcut, c. 1536–1540, 233 × 305 mm, London, British Museum, inv. E,8.160, © British Museum, London.
    • Figure 9.7: Peter Flötner, The Swines’ Supper, hand-coloured woodcut, 1536–1540, 264 × 380 mm, Gotha, Stiftung Friedrichstein, inv. 40,58, © Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha – aus den Sammlungen der Herzog von Sachsen Coburg und Gotha’schen Stiftung fü
    • Figure 9.8: Virgil Solis, Procession of Putti with Sausages and a Pig, engraving and etching, 1550s, 38 × 202 mm, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. A 3855, photo by Andreas Diesend.
    • Figure 10.1: Replica after Jérome Duquesnoy the Elder, Manneken Pis, bronze, 1965 (original completed in 1619), 61 cm, Brussels, photo by Catherine Emerson (2006).
    • Figure 10.2: Anonymous, Manneken Pis, engraving, c. 1720, illustration from Petrus de Cafmeyer, Histoire du Tres-Saint Sacrement de Miracle, transl. by George de Backer (Brussels: George de Backer, 1720).
    • Figure 10.3: Manneken Pis dressed, decorated and serving beer at a public ceremony, photo by Catherine Emerson (2010).
    • Figure 10.4: Thomas and Alexandre Francine, Fontaine de Diane, 1603, bronze, Palace of Fontainebleau, photo © Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
    • Figure 10.5: Heinrich-Clemens Dick after Hugo Lederer, Aachener Fischpüddelchen, bronze, 1954 (1911 original destroyed in World War II), Aachen, Fischmarkt, photo © Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
    • Figure 10.6: Anonymous, The Wolf and the Porcupine [Le Loup et le Porc Epic], plate 30 from Labyrinte de Versailles (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1679), Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Arsenal, EST-541, photo by https://gallica.bnf.fr/ar

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