In and out of the marital bed : Seeing Sex in renaissance Europe.

By : khairi janbek.

In her work; In and Out of the marital bed : Seeing Sex in Renaissance Europe, Diane Wolfthal says that, art historians are often reluctant to confront the sexual content of imagery in paintings. In Renaissance paintings, to outline the spatial topography of sexuality, the work's structure lists discrete sites : The bed, the dressing area, the window, the bath, and the street.

Whereas in the paintings, the marital bed was often linked to both anxiety and chaste sexuality, the dressing area was often became a setting for erotic images whose real subject is sexual desire. The window was associated with courtship, carnival, and prostitution; the bath was ofetn the site most often identified with voyeurism, and the street was associated with temptation and sin.

religious themes often concealed sexual innuendos to allow cardinals and princes to hang "risque" paintings in their homes. Coded visual annotations, such as falcons as well as the much paraded image of Jupiter; yearning for a youthful and beautiful ganymede, were used to hide images of homosexual desire.

can you look at a renaissance painting the same way again?.