Il nudo maschile

Speranza

Commissioned work nevertheless remained the norm, and the princes of Europe who besieged Tiziano for painting also employed artists, both native-born and foreign, to work for them at home.

What they ordered often cobmined the DECORATIVE and the EROTIC.

Female nudes were typical products of the artists of the Fontainebleau School in France, and the study of Lucas Cranach in Germany.

Paintings of this type had a politically symbolic function.

These paintings demonstrated the independence of the prince in his relationships with the Church, and at the same time marked the difference between him and his subjects, to whom such moral freedoms were not permitted.

Yet even a powerful ruler did not care to risk the accusation that his sexual appetites were abnormal -- or at least, to record the fact permanently in art.

For this reason it was FEMALE nudes, rather than male ones, which became identified with eroticism, and it is in these nudes, not male ones even when they are present, that erotic characteristics are detailed and deliberately exaggerated.

A FEW, RARE, erotic MALE nudes were produced.

Usually, as in the case of PARMIGIANO's "AMORE", and his drawing of "GANIMEDE", they tend to equate the female with the male -- to emphasise the likeness rather than difference.

YET the male nude retained one very important function.

It was the subject upon which every young artist cut his teeth, perhaps simply because, in the studios of the time, male 'models' were easier to procure than female ones.

In due course, what had been simply a custom became enshrined as part of a system.