La renaissance du nu antique à Venise

Overview & Synopsis

The nude appears in Renaissance painting and literature on several occasions, in the wake the recovery of many ancient masterpieces both literary and visual, as well as the resulting humanist reappraisal of the body. Its natural splendour resurfaced with special acclaim in Venice, most particularly in the painted works of Titian. Pietro Bembo's Carmina also shed new light on the topic of nudity. Comparison of these poems and Titian's art unveils a series of shared commonplaces, namely, Cupid as the naked child, the female nude bathing (Diana, Galatea) or in the privacy of her room (Danae, Venus) and the male nude in the form of both a Christian martyr (Saint Stephen, Saint Sebastian) and a pagan divinity (Pan, Dionysos). At once in their written and painted manifestations, these nudes correspond closely to the aesthetic precepts explicated by two contemporary theoreticians of art and literature, Lodovico Dolce and Pietro Aretino. The essential precepts are : softness, delicacy and strength, terribilità and grace.