Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art

by Patricia Lee Rubin

Renaissance bodies, dressed and undressed, have not lacked attention in art historical literature, but scholarship on the male body has generally concentrated on phallic-oriented masculinity and been connected to issues of patriarchy and power. This original book examines the range of meaning that has been attached to the male backside in Renaissance art and culture, the transformation of the base connotation of the image to high art, and the question of homoerotic impulses or implications of admiring male figures from behind. Representations of the male body’s behind have often been associated with things obscene, carnivalesque, comical, or villainous. Presenting serious scholarship with a deft hand, Seen from Behind expands our understanding of the motif of the male buttocks in Renaissance art, revealing both continuities and changes in the ways the images convey meaning and have been given meaning.
 

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published December 18, 2018

Reviews

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Freud's Trip to Orvieto, writer and art historian Nicolas Fox Weber wonders how Freud must have felt when looking at male nudes in all directions in the chapel in Orvieto. Overpowering, like being in a male locker room, Weber says... it reminds him (Weber) of a male orgy. Freud must have been floored, suggests Weber.

Maybe..

That Freud was deeply impressed and moved by the frescoes is a fact--but no one will ever know exactly in what way. We do know he had his famous memory episode, whereby, for the life of him, he could not remember the painter's name... though Freud had declared Signorelli to be his favorite painter... A strange choice, if you think about it. But Freud said that Signorelli was an artist who, in his opinion, had created the finest paintings he hadever  seen.

Wait--is Freud being humble here? Qualifying his opinion in terms of his limited experience? And then to forget--not once--but three times the painter's name....?

This Freudian slip became forever after known as the Signorelli Parapraxis. 

Freud has his story of what happened. But Weber has another theory--related to insecurities over his Jewishness and his sexuality.

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It is true that the male bum is everywhere in Orvieto. 

Apparently, Em Forster, in his diary in 1907 "jotted down a list of names suggesting a sort of gay lineage – Pater, Whitman, Housman – and added ‘Luca Signorelli?’ Alan Hollinghurst goes on, "I assume he had seen his frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral, in which the naked male backside is a pivotal feature, and jumped to his own conclusions."

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But, Signorelli, though he studied under Piero della Francesca, painted in the style of Donatello. That swagger! Hand on hip, leg turned out.... It was the Renaissance male pose par excellence... made famous by Micgelangelo... who is known to have stopped at Orvieto for a few days, but became so entranced by Signorelli's frescoes that he stayed several weeks. Rubin's book, Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art--puts everything in context! I can only imagine how fun it must have been to write...

Highly recommended if you love Michelangelo, Signorelli or Donatello.