Art and Love in Renaissance Italy
I'm glad I caught this exhibition yesterday, appropriately V-Day, before it ends tomorrow. Approximately 150 objects were on show: maiolica, bella donna dishes, birth trays, gift coffers, erotic drawings. On one birth tray, Venus shoots golden rays from her pudendum into the eyes of heroes from Classical, medieval and Biblical writings. Achilles and Paris. Lancelot and Tristan. Samson. I forget the last one. My favorite object was a pair of waffle tongs that impressed the host's name on waffles that the guests could bring home with them. A number of the paintings caught my eye. I like very much Giulio Romano's painting of a Roman prostitute. She is wrapped in a suggestively diaphanous cloth, the end of which she holds up with one finger. A green cloth fallen by the right of the painting alludes to the practice of hiding erotic or mistress paintings behind curtains or screens. I was in the world of Browning's "My Last Duchess." Alessandro's (?) painting of...