Conclusiones parciales

Romano, unlike Cellini, did not leave an autobiography and there is little extant information about the commission or its patron. Romano’s own sexual proclivities are also not demonstrable through written sources. There is scant published literature on this drawing with Saslow commenting only briefly in Ganymede in the Renaissance.133 Bette Talvacchia confers only a few paragraphs to the drawing in Taking Positions: On

the Erotic in Renaissance Culture.However, Talvacchia’s research is a valuable source because it explores the explicit nature of Romano’s heterosexual representations of copulation with similar themes, discusses their relationship with classical precedents and offers insights into their reception by Renaissance audiences. Not only does this assist with the chronological contextualisation of sexual representations, but Romano’s explicit images of copulation between a man and a woman also provide a platform for addressing how the same artist adopts different visual strategies with varying

conceptualising for depicting carnal behaviour between males. I will, therefore, discuss Talvacchia’s discourse on Romano’s I modi images of copulating heterosexuals and consider the relationship between mythological references and amatory scenes in both of these sexual contexts. Another theme I shall explore is how various layered allusions impute a range of meanings on Apollo and Cyparissus as an explicitly homoerotic scene immersed in classical sanctioning metaphor and how this drawing could be intended to assert and proclaim far more than licentious carnal intent alone.

132 _{Sabadino degli Arienti, ‘Le porretane’ (1483), cited in G. Basile, Stories from the Pentamerone,Rome, 1981,}

p. 106.

Although documentary evidence to support exact dating of the drawing is beyond recovery, Talvacchia makes a compelling argument that Apollo and Cyparissus is stylistically redolent of Romano’s earlier work.134 However, there are important differences between I modi and Apollo and Cyparissus, which make it erroneous to conflate these works into the same topos of salacious erotica. The mythological

references which were sufficiently distancing to elude censorship in the homoerotically charged Apollo and Cyparissus, as well as Cellini’s Apollo and Hyacinth, are absent in I

modi. There is instead, as Talvacchia notes, lascivious sexual activity that exemplifies

an ‘intention to gloss the erotic situations with a generic mythological reference rather than to convey precise mythological narrations’.135 Vasari remains silent on the matter of I modi in his biography of Giulio, but roundly condemns the obscenity of both the sonnets and the engravings in his vita of Raimondi: ‘in which regard, I do not know which is uglier, the spectacle of Giulio’s drawings to the eye, or Aretino’s words to the ears’.136

At first glance, Apollo might appear to be bestowing an open-mouthed kiss on his young companion whilst fondling his genitals. However, a secondary reading can be offered for consideration where the protagonists are following an initiatory model enmeshed with gender hierarchy that closely parallels those encoded in Cellini’s Apollo

and Hyacinth. That said, whereas Cellini’s sculpture of Apollo and Hyacinth

emphasises the emotional relationship of the two lovers, Romano’s Apollo and

Cyparissus, who also dies tragically at the deity’s hands, is far more unambiguous about

expressing the physical nature of their union. Yet, it is interesting to note how Romano

134 _{Talvacchia, 1999, pp. 128-30.} 135 _{Talvacchia, 1999, p. 134.}

136 G.Vasari, Vita di Marcantonio Bolognese, e d'altri intagliatori di stampe, primo volume della terza parte delle vite de' piu eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori, cited in Talvacchia, 1999, p. 7.

overtly depicts both penetrative vaginal and anal intercourse in I modi, but exercises far more restraint for his homoerotic scene of Apollo and Cyparissus. Similarly, Aretino’s accompanying sonnets (I sonetti lussuriosi) also elucidate how contemporary attitudes to heterosexual sex, even if the act technically qualifies as ‘sodomy’, were far less circumspect when addressing a ‘normative’ coupling:

Sonnet 8

It may very well be bollocks, since it is in my power to screw you now, to have put my cock in your pussy although there is no dearth of available ass. May my genealogy end with me, since I want to do you very often in your rear; for the sphere and the slit are as different as rainwater from wine.

Fuck me and do with me what you will both in my pussy and my behind; it matters little to me where you go about your business. Because I, for my part, am aflame in both places; and all of the pizzles of mules, asses, and oxen would not diminish my lust even a little. Then you would be a no-count fellow to do it to me in my snatch, in accordance with normal ways. If I were a man, I wouldn’t want pussy. 137

The private viewing conditions of explicit printed erotica depicting heterosexual copulation such as Romano’s I modi seem to call for a very limited veneer of

mythological precedent in narrative and visual form. However, the same artist’s rendering of Apollo and Cyparissus demonstrates that a need existed for sanctioning classical precedent when dealing with homoerotic themes. The mythological narrative performs a much more precise role in the form, meaning and composition of Romano’s

Apollo and Cyparissus. Whilst Talvacchia briefly mentions Romano’s drawing in her

publication, there is no acknowledgement of the different standards of decorum Romano applied to I modi and Apollo and Cyparissus. Rather than recognising Romano’s

indebtedness to the Ovidian homoerotic mythological narrative for this depiction of pederastic love between Apollo and his younger beloved, she reads Apollo and

Cyparissus as:

minimising the implied narrative content of

mythological reference…present[ing] difficulties in the identification of the god’s partner, since no easily readable attributes nor highly specific narrative details appear... Indicative of the concept behind the composition: the fundamental subject is erotic representation, not the narration of a mythological story. The visual signs needed to provide the cover of mythological allusion are kept to a minimum. 138

In its present location at the Stockholm National Museum, the drawing has as its caption Apollo and Hyacinth or Cyparissus? The fact that the image depicts the god with either one of his youthful male lovers is not called into question in published commentary and, aside from Talvacchia, there has been little attention paid to the iconographical evidence contained within the scene itself.139 Talvacchia suggests that he subject’s ambiguity might indeed be deliberately subordinated to the primary purpose of depicting Apollo with a young male lover.140 However, my premise for identification of this drawing as Apollo and Cyparissus rather than Apollo and Hyacinth is built upon Romano’s inclusion of the archer’s bow grasped in the youth’s left hand, which can be read as a direct allusion to the fatal weapon that felled the boy’s cherished stag and

138 _{Talvacchia, 1999, pp. 128-31.}

139 _{Romano’s drawing was included in the 2009 exhibition ‘Art and Love in Renaissance Italy’ at the}

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The brief description in the exhibition catalogue also touches on the matter of its ambiguous identification but offers no definitive conclusion, see L. Wolk-Smith, ‘Profane Love’ in A. Bayer, (ed.), Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, New Haven and London, 2009, p.190.

thereafter rendered him so grief-stricken that Apollo conducted his metamorphosis into a tree (Fig.2). Textual concordance is also maintained in the manner Romano’s pastoral landscape plays host to this scene of pederastic union. Secondly, the tree is given compositional centrality in the drawing, whereas there is no floral referent to suggest any alternative appellation as Hyacinth. Furthermore, the adolescent’s identity as Cyparissus is further supported by this very tree. The sap that seeps from its bark alludes to Cyparissus’ tears that will fall for ever in memory of the loss of his beloved stag. Also, as a hard perennial wood impervious to rot, cypress was often used as a symbol of longevity by sculptors and has been planted in cemeteries since antiquity when this durable and evergreen tree was perceived to be the antithesis of death and symbolic of eternal life.141

In a way that is analogous to the Ovidian story, Romano depicts the younger Cyparissus holding in his left hand the archer’s bow which fatally wounded his beloved stag. Apollo’s gift of a stag for the adolescent Cyparissus can be understood

allegorically as his recognition that his young lover is approaching maturity and ready for adulthood. Hunting is a common metaphor for sexual prowess throughout history and the symbolic significance of shooting a bow and arrow has resonance with ejaculation and vital sexual energy.142 The bow and arrow were both penetrative and ejaculatory, providing a sexual symbolism of an adolescent’s post-puberty state.143 Indeed, Boswell adduces that the prominence of the hunt in homoerotic poetry and Italian chivalric literature of the Middle Ages is due to its association of leisure

141 _{The symbolic function of the cypress tree as a symbol of bodily death and spiritual immortality has its roots}

in the fact that urns for containing the ashes of ancient Greeks were made from this wood. http://www.ehow.com/about_6469401_meaning-behind-cypress-trees.html.

142 _{For a detailed account of phallic symbolism and the sexual association of weaponry see P. Simons, The Sex}

of Men in Premodern Europe, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 112-22.

143 _{Also see M. Friedman, ‘The Falcon and the Hunt: Symbolic Love Imagery in Medieval and Renaissance art’}

activities such as hunting with same-sex desire.144 Furthermore, not only is forbidden carnal love all powerful, it can be, like the bow, perilous and has the capacity to inflict pain. As Patricia Simons notes: ‘masculine quivers hold profuse, penetrating objects that fluidly arc through the air, delivered by a bow that was more like the penis in function’. 145 The manner in which Cyparissus is holding Apollo’s bow erect by its hilt has suggestive homoerotic overtones and phallic connotations. Homoerotic connotations in association with a bow appear again in the early faithful copy by Eugenio Cajés of Parmigianino’s Cupid Carving his Bow (1535) (Fig. 28). In this painting Cupid presents his ample buttocks provocatively to the viewer as he carves his bow in an erotic

metaphor over two cherubs struggling with the conundrum of succumbing or resisting their temptation to touch the god’s flesh.146 Indeed, there are recorded rites of passage associated with many cultures where a juvenile becomes a man when he is deemed mature enough to join his peers on hunting exploits, with the slaughter of a large animal for the first time seen as part of a ritual associated with becoming ready for

adulthood.147 This killing of the stag in the Cyparissus legend preserves an archaic element missing from the Hyacinth myth with the killing of a large wild animal permitting Cyparissus to pass into the rank of adulthood after his mystical death. Now that he has successfully passed one of the initiation rites associated with a fundamental transformation in the manifestation of male power by killing such a large beast,

Cyparissus is finally worthy of being considered an adult male citizen. If Romano’s drawing is read as portraying the aftermath of the stag’s demise and at the very moment that Apollo agrees to turn Cyparissus into the aforementioned cypress tree so that he can

144 _{J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the}

Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, Chicago, 1980, p. 253.

145 _{Simons, 2011, p. 121.}

146 _{The homoerotic allure of this work is discussed by Saslow, 1986, pp. 129-31 and Wind, 1976, p. 95, n.10.} 147 _{For an account of cultural expressions and rituals of coming of age, see A. Schlegal and H. Barry III,}

grieve forever, as told in Ovid’s poem, then the image may be read as encapsulating a tender kiss of farewell as well as an explicit sexual activity.

There is a special resonance between the written account of Apollo and

Cyparissus and Romano’s visual rendition. When Talvacchia opines that there are

‘difficulties in the identification of the god’s partner, since no easily readable attributes nor highly specific narrative details appear’ in Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus, she does not appear to recognise the importance of the bow or the tree’s association with the Ovidian myth from which it was sourced.148 The classicising aura in the homoerotic drawing is more evident in comparison to the more naturalised rendering of the

heterosexual I modi, but Talvacchia posits ‘the youth’s identity is unclear partly because there is no emphasis on the particular mythological narrative’.149 I contend that male love and sexual pleasure pervade the drawing to such an extent that Talvacchia is remiss to attempt to ‘straighten out’ the image by conflating its themes with those of I modi. Moreover, the image’s carnality veils a multiplicity of nuances which we should aspire to comprehend because they address issues of identity, gender and sexuality in a way that is absent from his heterosexually biased erotic representations of couples

copulating.