Il nudo maschile

Speranza

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Edward Lucie-Smith:

"From the Italian Renaissance onwards, the nude and the male nude in particular, became the most important unit in an elaborate visual vocabulary."

"All secular art seemed to originate from, and then to return to, an interest in the male nude."

"Michelangelo's "ignudi" do not exist in isolation, but as units in the whole decorative scheme of the Sistine Ceiling. Yet it is also true that in Michelangelo's case the male nude seems to be a vehicle for quite special and personal feelings, so much so that the 'ingudi' threaten the unity of the scheme to which they form so important a part. Their combination of heroic force and subtle helplessness has been referred to by many modern students to their creator's homoerotic inclinations. Thanks to Freud, we are probably more aware of these impulses than Michelangelos was himself, and our ability to read what was for him, as well as for his contemporaries, al almost-obliterated subtext distorts our reactions to his work."

"For Michelangelo, the erotic consideration would not have been in the forefront of his mind -- he would, however, have been immediately aware of the relationship between his own art and an idealised classic past; of the stylistic uncertainties which had suddenly started to affect Italian painting in  his own day; and, most clearly of all, of the function of the heroic nude as an emblem of the powers of the Creator."