The Emergence of Sexual Violence in Quattrocento Florentine Art

Summary

The earliest representations of sexual violence in Florentine high art date from the middle and late Quattrocento. Their emergence seems to have been spurred on by the use of secular subjects and of Greco-Roman themes in particular. Most extant portrayals of sexually motivated pursuits and assaults (male to female, primarily) display such mythological tales of unbridled lust as those penned by Ovid and Plutarch and such historical accounts of brutal rapes and enforced marriages as those written by Cicero and Livy. Often conceived by art historians as images which pay tribute to male heroism, these portrayals have not formed an iconographical category of their own; nor have they been studied from the perspective of the victimized female figures that they feature. The misogynistic episodes that these depictions glorify appear to have been promoted (in this period still indirectly) by the writings of highly regarded humanists. Thus, like other privileged depictions of istoria, these texts reflect the growing currency which classical ideas must have gained among members of the intellectual and social elite. In addition, the portrayals differ from their Northern European counterparts which, even before the early Renaissance, derive not only from Athenian and Roman cultures but also—and especially—from Biblical stories of female victimization.

One of the themes of sexual violence to appear in quattrocento Florentine as well as Italian high art is Nessus's abduction of Deianira. Mythological in origin, this subject must have been singled out because of its association with Hercules, Deianira's husband, and, more significantly, the most adored and portrayed hero in Tuscany; moreover, introducing a centaur as the would-be rapist, Nessus's abduction of Deianira attests to the immense popularity that the representation of sexually aggressive beastly creatures have in Greek art and literature (fig. 1). Among the extant early renaissance images of the theme, the most famous today is Antonio Pollaiuolo's painting of circa 1465–70 (fig. 2) which exhibits both Nessus's attack on Deianira (on the left) and Hercules's swift and courageous reaction (on the right). Following some of the Florentine artist's other surviving mythological depictions—Hercules and Antaeus as well as Hercules and the Hydra (fig. 3)—the picture's primary purpose is to retell the story of one of the hero's victorious exploits visually. On the other hand, rather than focusing on Hercules, the illustration allows the figures of Nessus and Deianira to acquire equal prominence.