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As this second section illustrates, representations of pederastic relationships could assume various forms during the Renaissance depending on the medium in which they appeared. Here, I focus on Giulio Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus as an image distinctively and influentially grounded in amorous discourse between an older active agent and his adolescent beloved (Fig. 2). This drawing has a contrasting conceptual visualisation and physical execution to Cellini’s sculpture of Apollo and Hyacinth. It also exemplifies how there were different iconic ambits in the Renaissance - one private, the other public and illustrates the extent to which homoerotically charged imagery assumed different faces for private and public consumption. Whereas the intended audience for Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth would most likely have been diverse and fairly open, Romano’s drawing would have been distributed to a private circuit which was circumscribed and socially elevated. Congruent with Cellini’s

Apollo and Hyacinth, Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus remains consistent with the

perception of adult males from the higher classes and their position at the apex of a hierarchical social system that privileged patriarchy, age and power in his drawing of intergenerational love between men. Here, I pay particular attention to the manner in which this image draws variously on metaphors of desire, courtship, homoeroticism, and procreation. I also use this case study to elucidate the ways in which the sensuality and corporeal realism of the represented body leads to another social frame; the

homoerotic gaze and the social norms which produced it. In addition, I consider the extent to which an image depicting male same-sex erotic impulse, albeit in a different medium, might also correspond with the contemporary stereotypes of masculinity and femininity that took place in the patriarchal society of Renaissance Italy.

Giulio Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus is an example of the way in which homoerotic subject matter held a sensual appeal for many patrons from the

sophisticated, cultivated ranks of the humanist elite at this time. However, in order to be considered sufficiently decorous by erudite humanists rather than irredeemably

offensive, a veneer of respectability was needed to be conferred through an obvious mythological subject. The classical excursus used in this drawing was particularly important because, by virtue of its subject and medium, there was the potential for it to become publicly viewed as transgressive. Consequently, the visibility and identification of homoerotic elements at play in this drawing is heavily veiled in mythological

narrative. As Ruggiero explains: ‘to make erotic representations for the elite less troubling and to give them a suitably educated tone, printmakers adopted themes from antiquity which allowed them to represent naked bodies in suggestive poses with a veneer of intellectual respectability. In a pagan context, nudity, eroticism and even to a degree the sexual act itself became less troublesome and somehow more erudite – humanism made even lust an intellectual exercise’.128 In the context of homoerotic imagery it seems that Ruggiero’s observations of these common practices of

engendering sex scenes with mythology were regarded as necessity rather than choice.

Closer examination of Romano’s Apollo and Cyparissus will enable placement of this image at the intersection of modes of Renaissance thought where myth and sexual desire for other males were considerations that often mapped together in art. In fact, this linking of homoerotic depictions with mythological elements can be traced back to the previous century in Marco Zoppo’s Playing Putti (c.1450) where two male protagonists with linked arms and accompanying youths stand over a group of cavorting putti (Fig.

128 G. Ruggiero, ‘Hunting for birds in the Italian Renaissance’, in S. F. Matthews-Grieco, (ed.), Erotic Cultures

22).129 The putti are at play but there is an overt reference to anal penetration as one putto inserts an air bellows into the behind of another who bends over. It seems that the two pairs of male protagonists adhere to the required gender and power constructs for male-same sex desire but the inference of their sexual activity has to be gleaned from the actions of the putti who act as the personifications of love.

It is also intriguing to see how the mythological veneer we see in Giulio Romano’s drawing appears again in the same artist’s fresco for the ceiling of the Camera del Sole e della Luna in Mantua of Apollo on his Chariot (1527) - thus demonstrating that even works produced for private pleasure required couching in mythological narratives (Fig. 23). In this particular fresco for the ducal palace, the god’s unashamed flaunting of dramatically foreshortened and exposed nude buttocks and genitals brings a profane pseudo-classical tone in what seems to be an unambiguous tailoring of the Apollonian narrative to homoerotic tastes. Even Francesco Salvaiti’s

Study of Three Men (c.1545) which shows a group of males engaged in a clearly

physical homoerotic dialogue casts the proponents as classically inspired male nudes with hairstyles recalling the paradigmatic appearance of pagan gods from antiquity (Fig. 24). Interestingly, however, in Parmigianino’s Erotic Scene (1530) this overlay of classical mythology is remarkably absent despite the fact that a male is depicted grasping another’s aroused penis (Fig. 25). I maintain that the inclusion of a woman in this now prudishly censored drawing makes it closer in spirit to I modi. It is conceivable that by depicting a woman exposing her vagina, the homoerotic aspect is mitigated to the extent that the artist was able to eschew all pretence of a classical or pagan theme. I would also suggest that the expanded cast of both sexes here made this subject more

129 For an account of how Putti featured in ancient classical art as winged infants that were believed to have

acceptable because it would have been perceived as orgiastic rather than homoerotic; thus there was no need to assign this work to a recognisable mythological narrative. Another interesting example of the need to deploy mythology for the depiction of homoerotic encounters can be found in Perino del Vaga’s treatment of erotic subjects –

Couple Embracing and Apollo and Hyacinth (c.1525-7) (Figs. 26-27). Here, Giulio’s

fellow apprentice in Raphael’s workshop illustrates the two aspects of carnal pleasure – sexual desire between a man and a woman versus same-sex desire between two males. Although neither displays the salacious carnality we see in I modi or Giulio’s version of

Apollo and Hyacinth, these are noteworthy exemplars of the variance in attitudes to

erotica. In Perino’s erotic encounter between a man and a woman the couple remain ambiguous and unidentified. The artist renders this couple devoid of any classical or mythological overlay but yet in the accompanying drawing of male intergenerational love there is the necessity to veil the homoeroticism in the humanistic gloss of the mythological narrative of Apollo and Hyacinth. No mythological source can be

discerned in the former pas de deux but Perino makes sure that he captures the attributes of the Apollonian myth in the latter by including a bow and quiver, as well as the

sprouting eponymous flower.