complicit in injustice

The Renaissance in Italy was an era of terror and oppression more than beauty – but is its great art complicit in injustice? Should we rethink the Mona Lisa’s smile?

- the dark side of the Italian Renaissance

In a similar vein she discusses the possibility that the Venetian courtesan Angela del Moro, AKA “La Zaffetta”, was the model for the languidly reclining nude in Titian’s Venus of Urbino of c1534. She had earlier been the victim of a gang-rape, an episode lubriciously described in a poem by Lorenzo Venier, “Il Trentuno della Zaffetta” (1531).

Thus, the argument might run: Titian’s Venus is implicated in the endemic sexual violence of the era, though as the identification of La Zaffetta as the model is highly speculative, this is once again a kind of special pleading. These notes of 21st-century disapproval – however justified – run counter to the clarity of historical vision that is otherwise a feature of this fine book.

The Crucible of Europe: Italy and the Rise of the West

see also Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, $57.00 paperback, hmm