Giulio Romano

It's not every day that you learn about your new favorite Renaissance painter, and that is exactly what happened to me the other day. I was reading a discussion about Art vs. Porn. The article listed 10 artists from the 20th century, and as I went through the different comments, someone mentioned that all the listed artwork was pretty tame, and they compared it to a painting by Giulio Romano, Jupiter and Olympia. I clicked the link and I was really surprised about what came up:

Jupiter and Olympia

The image is obviously explicit, and being immersed in the American culture, I've sort of learned to separate sexuality from art, so seeing a painting that so masterfully depicts:

* Explicit sex
* An erection
* A voyeur
* An uncircumcised penis

It pretty much goes against a lot of assumptions that you see in some scenes, ahem, deviantArt!

Add to it the quality of the drawing and painting. The pose of the female, the coloring and construction of the muscles, obviously made me think of Michelangelo. But the mood was something totally different, something that I had never seen.

Of course the next step is Google. And I was really in for a treat, not so much on the erotic side of things, but in the art that I was about to find.

"Giulio Romano (c. 1499 – November 1, 1546) was an Italian painter and architect. A prominent pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism." (This and more here: http://www.all-art.org/DICTIONARY_of_Art/g/giulio1.htm)

Donna al Bagno

I recommend looking up his artwork. Now, regarding his more erotic side, there was a book published in the renaissance that included engravings based on paintings that Romano was doing as a commission. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Modi

Another interesting article about I Modi: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/dec/10/shakespeare-dirty-pictures (Are these Shakespeare's dirty pictures?)

Finally, just an FYI: I LOVE the Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, a triad of incredible masters. And with them, Giulio Romano, definitively a master.