If the tree placed centrally in the composition is perceived as embodying the symbolic metamorphosis of Cyparissus into adulthood, then just as the intimate embrace of the two male paramours signifies his adolescent passive exploits to its left, when
transformation is complete, he will step into the manly sphere of active adulthood that awaits him on the other side. Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus crystallises, but hardly resolves, the dilemma of a man who loves a youth who may be attracted to a woman or who, at least, is expected to marry and reproduce. Romano’s positioning of the tree instantiates patriarchal structures of power with clear separation of sexual pleasure from sexual duty. The way that the artist balances norm against transgression with the
inclusion of both male and female erotics of viewing positioned apart in the
composition underscores how sexual experiences between males in the Renaissance were only tolerated if they were successive and cyclical and not seen as an alternative to
155 D. Halperin and J. Winkler, Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek
World, Princeton, 1992, p. 186;B.Cohen, Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the construction of the other in
marriage and producing a family. Romano encodes the image with patriarchal power and categories of masculine virtue in the manner he juxtaposes the naked, idealised beauty of Cyparissus engaged in a sexually suggestive coupling with his paramour Apollo against the formless drapery that envelops the isolated clothed female figure. In accordance with prescribed contemporary gender roles this woman is, and will remain, ostracized from both the physical and spiritual facets of male relationships, regardless of their carnal intent.
Ovid’s Apollo is described as ‘that god who strings the lyre and the bow’ in the myth of Cyparissus.156 This motif together with the prominence of the tree that provides the backdrop seems intended as a further reference to the Cyparissus story. Here,
however, it is not a lyre but a large bowed stringed musical instrument that is positioned precariously leaning against the rock. The shape of this instrument is strongly
suggestive of feminine characteristics but, significantly, it is presently left neglected by the juvenile Cyparissus. Romano renders his female devoid of luscious, glorious fleshiness in a manner which eschews the objectifying logic of male gazing and female passivity, but includes instead an instrument which replicates the graceful curves of an idealised womanly form (Fig. 32).157 The erotic connotations of musical instruments and musical performance, as well as their association with sexual acts, finds expression in several Italian poems and songs from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.158 Pietro Aretino, who also composed poems to accompany the contemporaneous I modi, stated that ‘as all women know, music, songs and letters are the key to unlock the gates of
156 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 10, 107-8.
157 This musical instrument resembling a cello is likely to be bass viol da gamba which first appeared in the
early Renaissance. For an account of the history and use of this instrument, see I. Woodfield and H. Brown (eds.), The Early History of the Viol, Cambridge, 1984.
158 For the erotic power of music, see F. Dennis, ‘Unlocking the gates of chastity: music and the erotic in the
domestic sphere in fifteenth and sixteen-century Italy’ in S. F. Matthews-Grieco, (ed.), Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, Farnham, 2010, pp. 223-45.
chastity’.159 Tactile engagement with stringed instruments was thought to enhance the sense of eroticism and the transgressive aspect of lust during this period.160 Erotic
allusion to the commonality between musical and sexual virtuosity, emphasising how in both cases skilful execution reaped rich rewards appears in the sixteenth-century
carnival song ‘Canzo di lanzi sonatori di rubechine’ which exploits the double meaning of playing a stringed instrument with a bow: ‘To make clear and beautiful sounds / when the strings are slack / touch these pegs / which are placed inside here; / when you have tuned it well / it rewards you with a sweet little voice / When it is well tuned/ take this bow in hand; / move it vigorously up and down / to a dextrous finger and a clear touch; / whoever puts effort and intelligence into it / feels greater sweetness in the end.’161
In the case of Romano’s abandoned stringed instrument, the male protagonists could be read as a euphemism for neglecting the act of touching, cradling, handling, playing, and caressing the female body in order to emit the desired sounds. In addition, the instrument’s neck terminates with a carving of a serpent’s head in a way that could be understood as a symbolic allusion to female temptation (Fig. 33).162 This reference to Eve’s temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden finds a parallel in the pastoral setting of Apollo and Cyparissus and is emblematic of a potential threat to masculine virtue by succumbing to female sexual desire. Romano seems to be suggesting that the woman, playing the part of temptress, could prematurely distract their attention away from the serious business of pederastic pedagogy. The occurrence of a woman voyeur in the
159 P. Aretino, The Letters of Pietro Aretino, cited in Matthews-Grieco, 2010, p. 223. 160 Matthews-Grieco, 2010, p. 229.
161 T.J. McGee and S. Mittler, ‘Information on Instruments in Florentine Carnival Songs’, Early Music, 10,
1982, p. 458, quoted in Matthews-Grieco, 2010, p. 227, n. 28.
162 It was common for the peg-box of these large stringed instruments to be decorated with heads or scrolls but
same pictorial field forewarns that to cede phallic pleasure to a woman threatens socio- political status since domination by desire - particularly sexual desire for women - was considered as undermining the self-control so central to the conception of masculine virtue.163 As if to emphasise that passivity was only acceptable at a certain stage in a man’s life, the phallic symbolism of the temporarily abandoned bow that Romano prominently places in the centre foreground evokes a certain reassurance that once metamorphosis into adulthood as an active procreative being is complete, Cyparissus will return his attention to this more ‘natural’ form in order to fulfil his own patriarchal and pedagogical obligations. Despite its strong homoerotic overtones, within Romano’s drawing a coherent, if complex, picture emerges where it seems that once his
metamorphosis is complete, Cyparissus, in line with all juveniles expected to take up their place as erstwhile citizens, will soon marry and sire offspring as a civic and familial duty.