Bildnisse des Begehrens: Das lyrische Männerportrait in der venezianischen Malerei des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts -\- Giorgione, Tizian und ihr Umkreis (review)

This book takes as its subject some of the most challenging of Renaissance portraits: sensual, anonymous images of young males painted in Venice during the first three decades of the sixteenth century. The author begins by establishing a backdrop of conservative norms of masculinity intended to spotlight the transgressive qualities of certain portraits by Giorgione and his circle. The sources invoked range from Aristotle and Galen to sixteenth-century authors, especially Della Porta and Castiglione. From such broad textual beginnings, Koos narrows to Venetian authorities when considering "effeminacy as a problem" (121). The Venetian banker Girolamo Priuli (1476–1547) and patrician savio ai ordeni Marin Sanuto (1466–1536) are quoted, lamenting the cost of men dressing in more flamboyant, foreign styles of clothing. Priuli links effeminacy and sodomy to the calamitous events of the League of Cambrai, and to natural disasters such as pestilence and earthquakes. Despite such vivid accounts, Koos's historical discussion of sexual identity remains brief and generalized. Those interested in a deeper understanding of homosexuality in Venice would do well to return to her source, Guido Ruggiero's The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1989). In the end, Koos sees the transgressive power of these lyrical male portraits not so much in terms of sexual identity or even homoeroticism, but in a broader concept of subjectivity. This Subjektentwurf is described in the remaining sections of the book as a product of poetic longing, the change from traditional Venetian civic ideals to a more personal and courtly-inspired individualism, and the burgeoning notion of sprezzatura.

The sense of poetic longing is exemplified by the well-known lyrics of Petrarch's Canzoniere and Pietro Bembo's Asolani. The author mines these lyrics to great effect, particularly when exploring the "look as arrow" in the case of the Portrait of an Archer (Edinburgh), or the "wounds of love" in Palma il Vecchio's Portrait of a Young Man (Hermitage). More provocative is the author's assertion that such male portraits relate to an ideal of retreat rather than participation in Venetian statecraft. For Koos this ideal crystallizes in Caterina Cornaro's villa at Altivole, the closest thing the Republic had to its own courtly setting. In such regal company, the argument goes, Venetian elite focused more on sprezzatura and poetic finesse than on earnest fulfillment of duties to family or the Serenissima. The portraits partake of this attitude and are marked by an innovative sprezzatura technique. Koos extends this notion of nonchalance to the intimate and highly subjective poses of the sitters. For Koos the new subjectivity of this moment in portraiture finds its voice in Castiglione's The Courtier, even if some of the more tortured expressions of the sitters violate his admonition against affectation.

A study so focused on literary ideals often eschews other opportunities for pictorial analysis. Those hoping to find new archival evidence concerning sitters, patrons, or the display of images will be disappointed. The author disregards issues of connoisseurship so central in recent discussions of Giorgione and Titian. Koos might also have cast a wider net when searching for artists and artworks that shaped Giorgione's oeuvre. For example, the effeminate eroticism of Leonardo's images, especially his piquant contrasts of male beauty and ugliness, would seem highly relevant to Giorgione's development. Yet Leonardo is introduced only to quote from his notebooks on the subject of the paragone.

Despite its flaws, Bildnisse des Begehrens is a useful synthesis of the key social, political, and philosophical currents in Venice that might rightly be assumed to have shaped this genre of lyrical male portraiture. Koos is at her best when investigating the metaphors of love and bringing them to bear on deciphering the few props — slings, arrows, and...