James Turner’s Eros Visible is one of the most impressive books in Italian Renaissance art history to appear in many years. It is an extensively researched, erudite, original, and entertaining meditation on “art, sexuality, and antiquity in Renaissance Italy,” focusing primarily on the sixteenth century. It is the synthesis of decades of research reflected in the bibliography, which lists copious articles and key books published by the author over a period of more than thirty years. Bringing together scholarly writing on erotic art by Stephen Campbell, Mary Pardo, Patricia Simons, Bette Talvacchia, and many others, Turner sheds light on works by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Peruzzi, Correggio, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Salviati, Titian, and Tintoretto. His bibliography is teeming with highly eclectic references to a wide range of scholarship pertinent to his subject; he incorporates writings by Francesca Alberti, Leonard Barkan, Andrea Bayer, Michael Cole, Philippe Morel, Alexander Nagel, Ulrich Pfisterer, Charles Robertson, Patricia Rubin, Maria Ruvoldt, and others too numerous to mention here.
Turner’s book covers a rich variety of works: sculpture and painting, but also prints, drawings, medals, and maiolica. It is written with relish and extraordinary vitality. It is not merely to be read but to be savored for its wit and acute visual insights. Although the author received his training in the study of literature, which is evident in his close reading of texts, he also has a keen eye and is a close observer. When he discusses Titian’s portrait of Jacopo Strada, for example, he suggestively points out how Strada’s fingers approach those of the Lilliputian figurine of Venus that he holds in his hands—the hint of a physical bond. He amusingly and understandably refers to the statuette of Venus as the patron’s “mistress.”
Turner’s book is divided into several dovetailing chapters on art and literature, both ancient and modern. Pietro Aretino, Ludovico Ariosto, Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni Della Casa, Ludovico Dolce, Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco, Lucian, Ovid, and Pliny the Elder are just some of the authors to whom Turner refers. One of the most exciting sections of the book pertains to Agostino Chigi’s villa on the Tiber decorated by Peruzzi, Raphael, and Sebastiano del Piombo. Turner discusses the lost painting by Peruzzi on the villa’s entrance façade of the fornication of Mars and Venus—a subject that he analyzes in great depth and with considerable originality. The author of Eros Visible pursues many other subjects, including Raimondi’s I Modi (“The Ways”), which illustrates some of the various ways of copulating. Raimondi’s engravings, based on Giulio Romano’s drawings, were accompanied by Aretino’s outrageous sonnets. Although these images and texts have been much discussed, Turner’s treatment of them adds to our understanding.
Turner’s book is framed at its beginning and end by discussion of the highly controversial Leonardesque drawing of an angel (as of the Annunciation) which has an erection. He attributes the fleshy Angelo incarnato to Leonardo’s disciple Salai—although, as he notes, some think the drawing by Leonardo himself, while others reject the attribution. Turner’s summary of the various interpretations of the drawing is fascinating. In the spirit of diversity, let me add yet another here by way of analogy, not necessarily of specific influence or even intention. I am thinking of Boccaccio’s story of the rogue, Frate Alberto, who has his way sexually with a beautiful but dimwitted woman by coming to her as the angel Gabriel in the Annunciation—the ultimate travesty of the mystery of incarnation. Is the smile of the angel in the drawing one of spirituality or of pending corporeal pleasure?
Renaissance scholars, especially of iconography, art theory, sexuality, literature, patronage, classical antiquity, mythology, and social history—not to mention those who enjoy looking at sexy images—will be drawn to Turner’s entertaining and instructive book. I am confident that Eros Visible will come to be a sturdy foundation for all future studies of Renaissance erotica seen in a broad context.
