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An overview of representations in church decoration, legal texts, romances, chronicles, and political allegories – notwithstanding the differences of these contexts – can help us to recognize additional patterns. On one end of the spectrum, we find the question of religious imagery. In Last Judgement scenes naked female (and male) figures are represented in large numbers. Physical aggression against the human body is explicit and, in this respect, women suffer violence comparable to sodomites. The use of force is endorsed. Although the imagery is intended to denounce lustful acts, the paintings themselves effectively promote sex crimes. This subversive scenario can lead to the sanitization of the violent encounter between women and their tormentors (missing in the case of sodomites). The two political allegories in Padua and Siena mark the other end of the spectrum. I would like to believe that Giotto di Bondone’s Injustice comes closest to a universal denunciation of rape. Here the display of the naked female victim reinforces the explicit rendering of sexual aggression. The scene is carefully contextualized, which discards sanitizing readings. The radicalism of this fresco is striking even compared to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s War, where, instead of nudity, an equally general denunciation relies on the indicators of bridal status and abduction. Because of its reference to marriage, Lorenzetti’s work is closer to patriarchal structures than Giotto’s. Nevertheless, these two allegories constitute the pinnacle of visualizing civic political thought in the epoch and sketch the utopia of a rape-free society.
In this volume, Rebekah Compton offers the first survey of Venus in the art, culture, and governance of Florence from 1300 to 1600. Organized chronologically, each of the six chapters investigates one of the goddess's alluring attributes – her golden splendor, rosy-hued complexion, enchanting fashions, green gardens, erotic anatomy, and gifts from the sea. By examining these attributes in the context of the visual arts, Compton uncovers an array of materials and techniques employed by artists, patrons, rulers, and lovers to manifest Venusian virtues. Her book explores technical art history in the context of love's protean iconography, showing how different discourses and disciplines can interact in the creation and reception of art. Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence offers new insights on sight, seduction, and desire, as well as concepts of gender, sexuality, and viewership from both male and female perspectives in the early modern era.
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