Why sex should never be whitewashed from the art world

Jonathan Jones responds to prudish critics who accuse him of turning Renaissance art into a 'pornotopia' and explains why you should always go to galleries with sex on the brain

Is it merely prurient to want to know who a famous artist slept with? I don't think so. Personally I love to know what made the masters tick, and by tick, I mean get aroused. Many people see this kind of curiosity as superficial, sensationalist and irrelevant to the higher world that is art. I've even been told I see the Renaissance as a "pornotopia".

It seems trendy in conventional biographies to deny that artists slept with their models. We should not leap to conclusions just because their art seems massively sensual. That's why writer Hilary Spurling insists that Matisse never jumped into bed with the women he painted with such nakedly erotic pleasure, while Andrew Graham Dixon denies Caravaggio was gay just because he painted men with fleshly fascination.

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