Dinámica de la enfermedad

Whereas the fleshy putto is all innocent tenerezza, other fleshy figures may be more ambiguous in their message. For one, we may note the figure of Cupid, who combines the putto’s tender looks with a rather mischievous character. A wholly other kind of ambiguity can be discerned in the personification of charity, which, more than the putti she has as her attributes, stands for a particu- lar kind of tenderness. In fact, Bernini’s voluptuous figure of Charity (fig. 66) for the monument of Pope Urban VIII has been credited with an evocative power that is close to that of the tender infant: ‘She moves all the mothers that see her, without even wanting it, to love tenderly [teneramente], and to embrace their children,’ writes Borboni in 1661.60 _{Yet, not all were as positive about the}

figure. The anonymous critic of Bernini’s Constantine discussed in the previous chapter, quite bluntly presents the figure as ‘his [i.e., Bernini’s] Costanza trans- formed into Charity…’61 _{The author obviously refers here to Bernini’s onetime}

lover Costanza Bonarelli, who, before he caught her in bed with his brother Luigi and subsequently had a servant slash her face, was portrayed by the sculp- tor in an astonishingly sensual and vivacious bust (fig. 50).62 _{The marble derives}

its erotic thrust from an elaborate manner of veiling and unveiling, the chemise

male. Con che volle il Santo Bambino dare ad intendere, ch’essendo Anna Palmieri di gran ze- lo, era di spirito, alquanto però rigido, e duro: dove la Madre al rovescio, era tutta dolce, e so- ave.’ The passage is discussed in Scaramella 1997, p. 136. See furthermore Klapisch-Zuber 1998 and, in particular for the seventeenth century, Le Brun 1996, pp. 340, 342-343; at p. 340: ‘Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, al pari di tante altre religiose, nutriva nei confronti di queste statuette una devozione in cui una forma di amore materno si accompagnava a una elevata spiritualità.’

59 _{Bedaux 1998, pp. 104-116.}

60 _{Borboni 1661, p. 83: ‘Ella muove tutte le Madri che la veggono, ancorche non volessero, ad}

amare teneramente, e accarezzare i loro figliuoli.’

61 _{Previtali 1962a, p. 58 [= BAV, Barb.lat. 4331, f.21r]: ‘Lascio da banda la sua Costanza tras-}

formata in Carità [nella tomba di Urbano VIII], con tanti non so se figli, o Padri alle pop- pe…’ The remark suggests that the text was written before a piece of cloth was added in stucco to cover the breast at the end of the seventeenth century; cf. Körner 1999, p. 45 and Wittkower 1981, cat. 30. For the dating of the text see also supra, p. 116, n. 57.

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gliding of the right shoulder and falling open to reveal only a hint of her full bosom, leaving, as Torquato Tasso would have it, the imagination to linger on that which is so ‘enviously’ hidden, kindling the flames of desire.63

To be sure, the practice of studying women from life was not always greeted with enthusiasm. Ercole Ferrata’s request for permission to ‘strip an attractive young girl’ in order to have his students study from the female nude as well, was denied, the object of study being deemed unsuitable for the young sculp- tors’ eyes.64 _{In the case of the Charity, it was of course also the dubious charac-}

ter of the supposed female model that played a role. The accusation is in fact close to that addressed to Caravaggio at the beginning of the century. Mancini notes in his vita of the painter that his Death of the Virgin (fig. 67), painted for the church of the Madonna della Scala, was removed from that church by the Fathers ‘because in the figure of the Madonna he had portrayed a courtesan that he was in love with,’ while noting in a letter to his brother that it had been removed because ‘it was full of errors [spropositata] of lasciviousness and de- corum.’65 _{It seems that only the association with a less virtuous person could}

already mean a breach of decorum, indeed, even lasciviousness, disregarding the further content of the painting.66 _{Be this as it may, Bernini must have been}

very much aware of the power of association and one would not expect him to make the same mistake (if we may call it that) as Caravaggio.67

63 _{Tasso/Caretti 1993, Canto 4°, 31-32: ‘Parte appar de le mamme acerbe e crude, | parte altrui}

ne ricopre invida vesta: | invida, ma s’a gli occhi il varco chiude, | l’amoroso pensier già non arresta, | ché non ben pago di bellezza esterna | ne gli occulti secreti anco s’interna. || Come per acqua o per cristallo intero | trapassa il raggio, e no ’l divide o parte, | per entro il chiuso manto osa il pensiero | sì penetrar ne la vietata parte. | Ivi si spazia, ivi contempla il vero | di tante meraviglie a parte a parte; | poscia al desio le narra e le descrive, | e ne fa le sue fiamme in lui più vive.’

64 _{Letter from Torquato Mantauti to Apollonio Bassetti, dated Rome, 5 December 1676 in}

Lankheit 1962, doc. 114 [= ASF, Princ. Mediceo 3942]: ‘Il Sig.r Ercole Ferrata, a quale con- sesse S.A. che nella stanza solita del Palazzo di Madama si facesse lo studio del Modello ig- nudo, dov’egli mai si è veduto, mi ha fatto domandar licenza di poterci anco spogliare una bella giovanetta, ma io gliel’ho espressamente negato, scusandomi di non poterlo permettere senza haverne l’ordine da Firenze. Non mi è parso studio proportionato per i dui nostri gio- vani…’

65 _{Mancini/Marucchi & Salerno 1956, vol. 1, p. 224, from the intermediary manuscript edition}

[= BNF, Palatino 597]: ‘…per havervi ritratto in persone di Nostra Donna una cortigiana da lui amata e così scupolosa e senza devozione…’, notably, Mancini himself had tried to buy the picture; cf. Maccherini 1997, p. 76 and doc. 2: ‘…la morte della Madonna attorno con li Apostoli, quale andava nella Madonna della Schala di Trastevere che, per esser stata sproposi- tata di lascivia e di decoro, il Frate Scalzo ha fatta levare.’

66 _{See also Ottonelli & Cortona 1652, pp. 181-183. We may note that in the 1627 statutes of the}

Accademia di San Luca, it was mentioned explicitly that ‘no persons of bad reputation’ should be depicted; cf. Missirini 1823, p. 92, cited infra, n. 78.

67 _{In Giovan Battista Doni’s notes on Bernini’s comedy of the Inondazione del Tevere (‘The flood}

of the Tiber’), published by Montanari 2004, pp. 311-312, we can read that, after a house col-

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The ambiguity the sculptor had to deal with in his depiction of Charity is that the ideal mother is, evolutionary speaking, also the ideal sexual partner. This ambiguity is most clearly put into focus if we regard the female breast, originally exposed in Bernini’s rendering of the subject (fig. 66) but covered with stucco towards the end of the century. While it seems that in the Middle Ages the bosom was primarily seen as a source of nourishment, in the seventeenth cen- tury it was clearly an object of desire.68 _{Tasso, in describing the beautiful}

Armida in his 1581 Gerusalemme liberata, argues that it is by her bosom that ‘the fire of love is nurtured and awakened.’69 _{As Tasso’s use of the verb ‘to nurture’}

already indicates, the female bosom had not lost its previous association. In Bernini’s bozzetto for the Charity (fig. 68) in the Vatican museum, she suckles a child on her exposed breast, ‘trembling with milk,’ as Marino would express it, thus evoking indeed all the association with milk and nurturing so relevant for

the putto.70 _{It is the ‘fire of love,’ though, where lies the real attraction.}

In his commentary on the Pygmalion story in Anguillara’s translation dis- cussed above, Gioseppe Horologgi notes that, because men are naturally tempted to love, ‘they give in to loving some things of little advantage, only for their very delight, such as paintings, sculptures, medals, and similar things, and they love them so ardently, that the very same things get to satisfy their desire’ in a manner not unlike the satisfaction given by the love between a man and a woman.71 _{Likewise, Sforza Pallavicino notes that painted figures may spur the}

emotions, either for good or for bad, even if they are recognized to be painted. This is illustrated, he argues, by

the pestilent flames, that are lighted in the young hearts by obscene images, for which with the shamefulness of human impudence at every which hour much

lapses on stage, a fake corpse was carried out by two actors, copied ‘ad vivum’ in papier- mâché from an actual casualty of a collapsing house to be seen some months earlier in Rome.

68 _{For this ‘secularization of the breast’ see Miles 2008.}

69 _{Tasso/Caretti 1992, Canto 4°, 31: ‘Mostra il bel petto le sue nevi ignude, | onde il foco}

d’Amor si nutre e desta.’

70 _{Marino/Pozzi 1976, Canto 7°, 64: ‘Mostra ignudo il bel seno una di queste [ninfe], | e tre-}

manti di latte ha le mammelle…’

71 _{Gioseppe Horologgi in Ovid/Anguillara/Horologgi & Turchi 1610, book 10, p. 166:}

‘…esssendo la volontà nostra naturalmente spinta ad amare, si danno ad amare alcune cose di poco frutto, solamente per proprio loro piacere, come Pitture, Sculture, medaglie, ò simil co- se, e le amano cosi caldamente, che vengono le medesime cose, a satisfare al desiderio loro, come se se rimanessero satisfatti del desiderio del vero Amore, che deve esser fra l’huomo, e la donna.’

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money is paid to be the doormen of the soothing lasciviousness: taking to be pre- cious the very desire to sin.72

The often repeated story of the Venus of Cnidos—coincidentally, so the story goes, posed for by a courtesan—is the prime examples of the dangers of the nude.73 _{And indeed, some two millennia later, the work had not lost its lure, as}

one author deemed a well known copy, the Medici Venus (fig. 69),

…the most rare miracle that Greece has sculpted in all its lasciviousness, in which Art with its softness shows itself so presumptuous in its want to teach Nature the ability to mould mankind among the stones, and to invent a new carnal sin in the amorous embrace of a stone.74

Thus, the softened marble reaches out and lures the petrified beholder. It is a power that is not restricted to ancient statues alone. John Evelyn notes in his diary:

At the very upmost end of the Cathedral [of Saint Peters] are diverse stately Monu- ments, especially that of Urban the VIIIth, amongst all which there is one [that of Paul III Farnese] observable for two naked incumbent figures of an old, & a young woman upon which last, there now lyes a covering, or apern of brasse, to cover those parts, which it seemes occasioned a pigmalian Spanyard to be found in a las- civious posture, so rarely to the life was this warme figure don...75

72 _{Pallavicino 1644, pp. 456-457 [= III.50]: ‘E pur le figure dipinte, benchè per dipinte sien}

ravvisate, pungono acutamente l’affetto. Il dimostrano con buona; e con rea operazione, e le divote lagrime, che spesso traggon dagli occhi alle persone spirituali i ben formati ritratti del tormentato Redentore, e le fiamme pestilenti, che sono accese ne’ petti giovanili dalle imagine oscene, le quali con obbrobio dell’umana sfacciataggine tal’ora pagansi gran danaro per esser mantici della sopita lascivia: comperandosi come prezioso il desiderio medesimo di peccare.’

73 _{To give a contemporary rendering of the story: Leti 1669, vol. 2, pp. 130-131: ‘Scrivono che}

un giovine Cittadino, innamoratosi della bellezza di questa Venere, doppo haverla vagheg- giata più mesi, come appunto se havesse fatto l’amore ad una viva Verginella, finalmente nas- costosi una notte dentro il tempio, senza che il Sagristano se ne accorgesse, se ne andò poi vedendosi solo, dove era questo simulacro, e con gran passione, e sfrenatezza di senso, si diede à sfogar le sue impudiche voglie, onde vi restò per segno della lascivia del giovane, una difettuosa macchia nella Statoa…’

74 _{Lupis 1682, p. 71 (Letter to Sig. Antonio Morrone, Bergamo): ‘Quella Venere de Medici, il}

più raro portento, che intagliasse dalle sue lascivie la Grecia, in cui l’Arte con le sue mor- bidezze mostrossi così presuntuosa in voler insegnare la Natura di potersi impastare l’Humanità trà le selci, e d’inventare un nuovo peccato di carne negl’amorosi amplessi di un sasso.’ For the Medici Venus in the seventeenth century see also Goldberg 1983, pp. 227- 251.

75 _{Evelyn/Beer 1955, vol. 2, pp. 264-265 (19 Novembre, 1644); for the fortunes of this figure}

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One may wonder if such responses were confined strictly to non religious works of art. In fact, Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) in his De inspira-

tionibus, when warning against the dangers of showing the human flesh, explic-

itly included that of Christ: ‘I know of a person,’ he writes, ‘who, while con- templating the humanity of Christ on the cross—it is shameful to say and hor- rendous just to imagine—sensually and foully polluted and defiled himself.’76 _In

the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pietro da Lucca warned that particularly women ‘should be cautious when contemplating the nude flesh [nudità della

carne] of the Saviour,’ for they could be ‘easily led to some vile and ugly

thoughts of carnality.’ Men, on their turn, should be wary of impure thoughts when contemplating the Virgin Mary or other female Saints.77 _{It must have}

been similar occupations that had brought Pope Clement VIII (installed 1592) to exercise censorship on nudity in churches, demanding nude figures to be clothed or removed.

Naturally, nudity can be quite easily banned, at least from churches, but even if the council of Trent prescribed a tactical use of draperies—a prescrip- tion repeated in the statutes of the Accademia di San Luca—this did not, it seems, solve the whole problem.78 _{Many artworks derive their evocative power}

76 _{Bernardin of Siena 1950-65, vol. 6, p. 259: ‘Novi personam, quae dum contemplabatur hu-}

manitem Christi pendentis in cruce (pudet dicere et horrendum est etiam cogitare) sensualiter et turpiter polluebatur et foedabatur.’ Trans. from Brown 2001, p, 284 who gives a more ex- tensive discussion of the problem of the religious nude.

77 _{Lucca 1535, pp. 11v-12r, cited in Gaston 1995, n. 47 (from the 1527 ed., pp. 9v-10r): ‘…le}

donne dovere essere molto caute nel meditare la nudita della carne del Salvatore. Imperoche troppo fortemente figendo la imaginatione in quella, per opera del Demonio facilmente potrebbero incorrere in qualche laido e brutto pensiero de carnalitade: si come all’huomo an- chora per la differentia del sesso, simile pericolo accaderebbe se la nudita di Maria vergine, o d’altra Santa martyre con forte imaginatione considerate volesse; e semi dicesti, paretti cosa strana, che la carne del Signore, quale e imbalsamata del balsalmo della santa divinita, possi le donne indurre a tali dishonesti pensieri: Et similmente la Verginea & immaculata carne di Maria Vergine: della quale piamente si referisce, e credesi, che mai persona alcuna ad alcuno carnale movimento eccitasse. Ti rispondo: ch’ el Signore ci ha dottato del uso della ragione, accioche ragionevolmente ogni nostro atto & opera facciamo con ditta ragione: essendo adonche contra la ragione non considerare la pronita & inclinatione nostra a la lascivia, e non fugire i pericoli dell’anima, procedendo noi senza ragione, e non fugendo le occasioni de’ pe- ricoli, come c’ insegna essa ragione: il demonio ingerendosi, ci induce a laidi e dishonesti pen- sieri; permettendo questo el Signore per nostra colpa. Non e adonche la carne del nostro Sal- vatore, ne di Maria Vergine, ma el demonio ela nostra negligentia, insierne con la nostra fan- tasia, che ci induce tale tentationi, riducendoci a memoria li pudendi membri, e libidinosi atti de altre petsone gia conosciute, & forse impudicamente amate.’

78 _{From the statutes approved by Urban VIII in Missirini 1823, p. 92, pt. 9: ‘Che nelle Opere}

sacre si osservasse il decreto del Concilio di Trento, nè si dipinge cosa, che contenesse falsi dogmi, o ripugnasse alla sagra scrittura, o alle tradizioni della Chiesa; e si fuggisse ogni inven- zione bruta ed oscena: nè si esponessero effigie di persone di mala fama, e nei dipinti, sempre s’avesse cura, che il decoro del corpo, e l’ornamento del vestito corrispondessero alla dignità, e santità del prototipo.’ Cf. Ottonelli & Cortona 1652, p. 41: ‘Sono così grande le tentationi

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not from bluntly displaying nude flesh, but by more subtle suggestions. As Giovan Domenico Ottonelli notes in his 1652 book on the ‘use and abuse’ of painting and sculpture, ‘a beauty is enough, even if she only reveales little and shows little nudity, to melt the hearts of God’s children with desire.’79 _The

question is not as much what is shown, but what can be imagined. We have already mentioned Tasso’s musing on the bosom of Armida, while no less strik- ing is Marino’s evocative poem on ‘imperfect delight’. Here the poet evokes a love not consumed, but held at the height of its passion: ‘she tampers the flame but the fire is not smothered,’ and ‘she denies me the fruit of Amor’s garden, but grants me the flower,’ and more literal, ‘she takes me in her arms, but does not want me in her bosom [in seno].’ ‘Made a Tantulus, I am in Paradise,’ con- cludes Marino; the imperfect delight has become the highest attainable.80 _Such

tensions, rather than avoided, were explicitly evoked by the artist, and religious art was no exception.