DOMINIQUE MILLAR - Artist
  • Home
  • About
  • Teaching
    • Current / Upcoming Courses >
      • Drawing for Beginners - 2 Day Workshop
      • Still Life & the Art of Composition
      • The Golden Age of British Landscape Painting
      • The Elements of Drawing
      • Art and Anatomy in Early Modern Italy
      • Galileo and the Visual Arts - The Unity of Science and Design
    • Previous Courses >
      • 2017 >
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • Sustained Life Drawing with Red, Black and White Chalk on Buff and Blue Coloured Paper
        • Painting the Nude - the limited palette approach
        • Portraiture and the Passions
        • Fundamentals of Drawing
        • Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners at The Makery
        • Principles of Beginners Life Drawing Workshop
        • Artistic Anatomy for Beginners: In the Footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners – from Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Union of Art History and Practice: the Renaissance and the "Rebirth" of Art
      • 2018 >
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Fundamentals of Drawing Weekend Workshop
        • Landscape Drawing Lessons from the Masters Weekend Workshop
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Fundamentals of Drawing
        • Drawing the Nude - 1 Day Intensive Sustained Pose
        • Pastels for Beginners and Intermediate
        • Portrait Drawing: Beginners to Advanced
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • Oil Painting for Beginners
        • The Art of Competition: From the High Renaissance to the Baroque
        • Sketching with Pen and Ink
        • Drawing the Animal Kingdom - One Day Workshop
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • Drawing 101: A Beginner's Guide
        • Drawing the Figure from Life - Beginner to Intermediate
        • Drawing the Figure from Life - Beginner to Intermediate
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Learn to Draw with Pastels - Beginners & Beyond
        • Paradigms of the Baroque: The Art of Italy and the Dutch Golden Age
        • Drawing for Beginners - From Shapes to Figures from Life
        • Drawing for Beginners - From Shapes to Figures from Life
      • 2019 >
        • Drawing Essentials for Beginners - One Day Workshop
        • Drawing with Red, Black & White Chalks on Coloured Paper
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Life Drawing for Beginners
        • The Sensual and the Sexual in the Art of the Renaissance and the Baroque
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Drawing with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Political Artist: David, Delacroix and Courbet
        • Life Drawing for Beginners & Beyond
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • Life Drawing for Beginners & Beyond
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • Drawing Animals Workshop
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Learning to Draw the Landscape with Traditional Mixed Media
        • Life Drawing Beginners to Intermediate – The Sustained Pose
        • The "Divine" Raphael
      • 2020 >
        • Drawing for Beginners
        • Draw with Red, Black & White Chalk Pencils on Coloured Paper
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • Drawing Portraits
        • Drawing Landscapes
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Life Drawing Beginners to Intermediate – The Sustained Pose
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners - Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Figurative Compositions with Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners - Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Joseph Mallord William Turner - the Sun is God!
        • The Cultural Disconnect of “Contemporary Art” - How Did We Get Here?
        • Draw with Red, Black & White Chalks on Coloured Paper
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners (Online Class)
        • Sketching with Pen and Ink
        • How to Compose a Still Life Composition (Online Taster Class)
        • Drawing for Beginners: How Simple Geometric Shapes Can Help You Draw Anything You Want (Online Taster Class)
        • Painting in Spain: From the Escorial to the Enlightenment (Online Class)
        • Goya - A Painter for his Age (Online Class)
        • Still Life & the Art of Composition (Online Class)
        • Learning to Draw the Landscape with Traditional Mixed Media (Online Class)
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms (Online Class)
      • 2021 >
        • Drawing for Beginners: How Simple Geometric Shapes Can Help You Draw Anything You Want
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters - Beginners to Intermediate
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters - Beginners to Intermediate
        • John Ruskin - Victorian Art Critic & Social Activist
        • William Morris - Socialism & the Egalitarian Values of Craftsmanship
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Art Of Joseph Lycett & John Lewin: A Visual Window into Aboriginal Cultures of NSW
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Principles of Life Drawing - Beginners to Intermediate
        • Nicolas Poussin: Poetic Truth and Antiquarian Patronage in Baroque Rome
        • Art & Classical Subject Matter
        • Women Artists - from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century
        • Art and the Bible
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Drawing with Mixed Media
        • The Elements of Drawing
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The French Rococo: From Charles de la Fosse to Fragonard
        • Art and the Saints
        • Joshua Reynolds' Discourses on Art
  • Short poses
  • Studies
  • Portraits
  • Istoria
  • My Collection
  • Contact

The Sensual and the Sexual in the Art of the Renaissance and the Baroque


The sensual aspects of a work of art are essential to its capacity to captivate us as viewers. In the early-modern period these qualities were both admired and censored. We will examine this cultural tension within both religious and secular works of art, the beginnings of mass-produced pornography and the visual embodiment of gender within works of art within the period.

SUGGESTED READING
  • Marcia B. Hall and Tracy E. Cooper, eds., The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
  • Stuart Lingo., Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
  • Ian Frederick Moulton, ed., Eroticism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery, (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016)
  • Berthold Hub and Angeliki Pollali, Images of Sex and Desire in Renaissance Art and Modern Historiography, (Routledge, 2018).
  • Lynne Lawner, I modi : the Sixteen Pleasures: An Erotic Album of the Italian Renaissance, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988).
  • Mary Rogers and Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity, (Manchester University Press, 1997).
  • Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
  • Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, ed., Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, (Routledge Press, 2010).
  • Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
  • James M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
  • Margot and Rudolf Wittkower, Chapter 7 “Celibacy, Love, and Licentiousness”, Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists – A Documentary History from Antiquity to the French Revolution, (New York: Random House, 1963).


COURSE OUTLINE

  • Art and Ambiguity – the Sensual and the Erotic: We will examine the subtle tension between the role of sensuality within religious iconography and the piety of the early-modern period. This will be understood within the context of the top-down approach of the Counter-Reformation church, which attempted to both clearly define the boundaries of the sensual and to censure its expression. This cultural tension was often central to some of the most significant religious experiences of late medieval and early-modern saints, where matrimonial and even quasi-erotic metaphors of being wedded to Christ were not uncommon. We will examine comparative examples of this, such as the numerous depictions of the mystical marriages of Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Siena to Christ, as well as the famous seventeenth century sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sensually charged depiction of the mystical experience of the Spanish Saint Theresa of Avila. These will be seen comparative to secular works, such as the painter, Correggio’s classical depiction of the priestess, Io, in a state of climactic orgasm, copulating with the Greco-Roman god, Jupiter. In addition to examining the cultural tension between the religiously sensual and the outright erotic, we will consider with caution, the later imposition of psychoanalytical interpretations to such works of art and the possible tendency to overly simplify and anachronistically impose modern assumptions and perceptions of the “sexualised image” upon earlier visual culture.
 
  • The Engraver Marcantonio Raimondi and the Early Mass-Production of Pornography: In 1524, the engraver, Marcantonio Raimondi, famous for his prints after works by the painter, Raphael, published a series of scandalous engravings that vividly depicted sixteen sexual positions. The I Modi or The Ways / Positions, as they were called, were based on paintings by Giulio Romano, one of the leading pupils of Raphael. The prints of copulating figures were contextualised within a very thin visual veneer of scholarly respectability, in the guise of classical gods and historical figures. Following their publication, Raimondi was imprisoned by Pope Clement VII and copies of the work destroyed. The poet, Pietro Aretino, who assisted in organising the release of Raimondi, later had the images republished with his own accompanying and extremely lewd sonnets. This caused a further moral outcry which resulted in Aretino having to flee the city of Rome. In this class, we will analyse both the influence of Raimondi’s prints, their iconography and broader relationship to other works of art within the early-modern period.
 
  • Homosocial Behaviour and Experience in the Renaissance: In this class, we will aim to understand how same-sex attraction functioned within the context of the early-modern city of Florence. We will look at the role of the city’s “moral police”, the Officers of the Night, who between 1432 and 1502, charged more than 17,000 men with the crime of sodomy, convicting around 3000. Among those charged included the young twenty-four year old artist, Leonardo da Vinci. These large numbers will be seen to reflect the context of a broader homosocial culture that promoted the segregation of the sexes, as seen in the image of men bathing, by the late sixteenth century painter, Domenico Passignano, in his work, The Bathers at San Nicolo. From this broader context, we will examine homoerotic works of art by both Florentine and other Italian artists, including Michelangelo, Bronzino, Cellini and Correggio.


PLANNED LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

  1. Gain awareness for the cultural constructions of sensuality, eroticism, sexuality and gender in the early-modern period.
  2. Visually identify iconography that broadly encompasses both the sensual and the erotic within the visual arts of the early-modern period.
  3. Gain an appreciation for both the cultural synthesis and the perceived contradictions one might be presented with, when seeking to understand the relationship of the sensual and erotic within the context of religious and secular art of the period.


When:
Wed 13 Mar - 27 Mar 2019
1.00 AM - 3.00 PM 


Where:
WEA Sydney
72 Bathurst Street 


Student Feedback:

'Trying to understand the perspective of artists, patrons and viewers in the past is always engaging. In three lectures, Dominique Millar covered the topic well and his reading lists invite further study.'


'This was an extremely interesting course, very well taught.'


  • Home
  • About
  • Teaching
    • Current / Upcoming Courses >
      • Drawing for Beginners - 2 Day Workshop
      • Still Life & the Art of Composition
      • The Golden Age of British Landscape Painting
      • The Elements of Drawing
      • Art and Anatomy in Early Modern Italy
      • Galileo and the Visual Arts - The Unity of Science and Design
    • Previous Courses >
      • 2017 >
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • Sustained Life Drawing with Red, Black and White Chalk on Buff and Blue Coloured Paper
        • Painting the Nude - the limited palette approach
        • Portraiture and the Passions
        • Fundamentals of Drawing
        • Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners at The Makery
        • Principles of Beginners Life Drawing Workshop
        • Artistic Anatomy for Beginners: In the Footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners – from Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Union of Art History and Practice: the Renaissance and the "Rebirth" of Art
      • 2018 >
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Fundamentals of Drawing Weekend Workshop
        • Landscape Drawing Lessons from the Masters Weekend Workshop
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Fundamentals of Drawing
        • Drawing the Nude - 1 Day Intensive Sustained Pose
        • Pastels for Beginners and Intermediate
        • Portrait Drawing: Beginners to Advanced
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • Oil Painting for Beginners
        • The Art of Competition: From the High Renaissance to the Baroque
        • Sketching with Pen and Ink
        • Drawing the Animal Kingdom - One Day Workshop
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • Drawing 101: A Beginner's Guide
        • Drawing the Figure from Life - Beginner to Intermediate
        • Drawing the Figure from Life - Beginner to Intermediate
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Learn to Draw with Pastels - Beginners & Beyond
        • Paradigms of the Baroque: The Art of Italy and the Dutch Golden Age
        • Drawing for Beginners - From Shapes to Figures from Life
        • Drawing for Beginners - From Shapes to Figures from Life
      • 2019 >
        • Drawing Essentials for Beginners - One Day Workshop
        • Drawing with Red, Black & White Chalks on Coloured Paper
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Life Drawing for Beginners
        • The Sensual and the Sexual in the Art of the Renaissance and the Baroque
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Drawing with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Political Artist: David, Delacroix and Courbet
        • Life Drawing for Beginners & Beyond
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • Life Drawing for Beginners & Beyond
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Principles of Life Drawing from the Masters
        • Drawing Animals Workshop
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Learning to Draw the Landscape with Traditional Mixed Media
        • Life Drawing Beginners to Intermediate – The Sustained Pose
        • The "Divine" Raphael
      • 2020 >
        • Drawing for Beginners
        • Draw with Red, Black & White Chalk Pencils on Coloured Paper
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • Drawing Portraits
        • Drawing Landscapes
        • The Creative Conventions of Portraiture
        • Life Drawing Beginners to Intermediate – The Sustained Pose
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners - Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Figurative Compositions with Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners - Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Joseph Mallord William Turner - the Sun is God!
        • The Cultural Disconnect of “Contemporary Art” - How Did We Get Here?
        • Draw with Red, Black & White Chalks on Coloured Paper
        • The Elements of Drawing for Beginners (Online Class)
        • Sketching with Pen and Ink
        • How to Compose a Still Life Composition (Online Taster Class)
        • Drawing for Beginners: How Simple Geometric Shapes Can Help You Draw Anything You Want (Online Taster Class)
        • Painting in Spain: From the Escorial to the Enlightenment (Online Class)
        • Goya - A Painter for his Age (Online Class)
        • Still Life & the Art of Composition (Online Class)
        • Learning to Draw the Landscape with Traditional Mixed Media (Online Class)
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms (Online Class)
      • 2021 >
        • Drawing for Beginners: How Simple Geometric Shapes Can Help You Draw Anything You Want
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • The Fundamentals of Drawing for Beginners
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters - Beginners to Intermediate
        • Chalk Pastel Techniques of the Masters - Beginners to Intermediate
        • John Ruskin - Victorian Art Critic & Social Activist
        • William Morris - Socialism & the Egalitarian Values of Craftsmanship
        • Drawing the Nude in Chalk Pencil
        • The Art Of Joseph Lycett & John Lewin: A Visual Window into Aboriginal Cultures of NSW
        • Learning to Draw with Traditional Mixed Media
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The Principles of Life Drawing - Beginners to Intermediate
        • Nicolas Poussin: Poetic Truth and Antiquarian Patronage in Baroque Rome
        • Art & Classical Subject Matter
        • Women Artists - from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century
        • Art and the Bible
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • Drawing with Mixed Media
        • The Elements of Drawing
        • The Principles of Drawing for Beginners: Basic Geometric Shapes to Living Forms
        • The French Rococo: From Charles de la Fosse to Fragonard
        • Art and the Saints
        • Joshua Reynolds' Discourses on Art
  • Short poses
  • Studies
  • Portraits
  • Istoria
  • My Collection
  • Contact