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Art as an excuse for depicting prurient interests

Before the 1850s and the birth of modern art, artists needed an excuse to depict violence and sexuality in their paintings or engravings. Mythology and martyrology provided an excuse to display these themes.

Violence

See also: aestheticization_of_violence, graphic violence


The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Some of the stories included in Saint Anthony's biography are perpetuated now mostly in paintings, where they give an excuse for artists to depict their more lurid or bizarre fantasies. Many pictorial artists, from Félicien Rops and Hieronymus Bosch to Salvador Dalí, have depicted these incidents from the life of Anthony; in prose, the tale was retold and embellished by Gustave Flaubert.

Massacre of the Innocents

The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent action. Artists of the Renaissance took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude. Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna. Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once.

The Last Judgment

In art, the Last Judgment is a common theme in medieval and renaissance religious iconography. Like most early iconographic innovations, its origins stem from Byzantium. In Western Christianity, it is often the subject depicted on the central tympanum of medieval cathedrals and churches, or as the central section of a triptych, flanked by depictions of heaven and hell to the left and right, respectively (heaven being to the viewer's left, but to the Christ figure's right). The most famous Renaissance depiction is Michelangelo Buonarroti's in the Sistine Chapel. Included in this is his self portrait, as St. Bartholomew's flayed skin.

Judith

The subject: a daring and beautiful woman Judith in her full maturity, dressed as for the feast with all her spectacular jewels, accompanied by an apprehensive maid, succeeds in decapitating the invading general, Holofernes. The moral is as much about the dangers of a beautiful woman, as had been told of Delilah and Samson, but here the woman was a culture-hero to the listeners.

Medusa

Caravaggio's and Rubens's Medusa.

Salome

The Biblical story of Salome has long been a favourite of painters, since it offers a chance to depict oriental splendour, semi-nude women, and exotic scenery under the guise of a Biblical subject. Painters who have done notable representations of Salome include Titian and Gustave Moreau.

Nudity and eroticism

Depictions of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Venus (mythology), The Three Graces

Leda and the Swan

The motif of Leda and the Swan from Greek mythology, in which the Greek god Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, was rarely seen in Gothic art, but resurfaced as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in Italian painting and sculpture of the 16th Century.

The Three Graces

On the representation of the Graces, Pausanias wrote,

"Who it was who first represented the Graces naked, whether in sculpture or in painting, I could not discover. During the earlier period, certainly, sculptors and painters alike represented them draped. [...] But later artists, I do not know the reason, have changed the way of portraying them. Certainly to-day sculptors and painters represent Graces naked."

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Venus

Venus became a popular subject of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period in Europe. As a "classical" figure for whom nudity was her natural state, it was socially acceptable to depict her unclothed. As the goddess of sexual healing, a degree of erotic beauty in her presentation was justified, which had an obvious appeal to many artists and their patrons. Over time, "venus" came to refer to any artistic depiction of a nude woman, even when there was no indication that the subject was the goddess.

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