Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art
by Patricia Lee Rubin
In Freud's Trip to Orvieto, writer and art historian Nicolas Fox Weber wonders how Freud must have felt when looking at male nudes in all directions in the chapel in Orvieto. Overpowering, like being in a male locker room, Weber says... it reminds him (Weber) of a male orgy. Freud must have been floored, suggests Weber.
Maybe..
That Freud was deeply impressed and moved by the frescoes is a fact--but no one will ever know exactly in what way. We do know he had his famous memory episode, whereby, for the life of him, he could not remember the painter's name... though Freud had declared Signorelli to be his favorite painter... A strange choice, if you think about it. But Freud said that Signorelli was an artist who, in his opinion, had created the finest paintings he hadever seen.
Wait--is Freud being humble here? Qualifying his opinion in terms of his limited experience? And then to forget--not once--but three times the painter's name....?
This Freudian slip became forever after known as the Signorelli Parapraxis.
Freud has his story of what happened. But Weber has another theory--related to insecurities over his Jewishness and his sexuality.
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It is true that the male bum is everywhere in Orvieto.
Apparently, Em Forster, in his diary in 1907 "jotted down a list of names suggesting a sort of gay lineage – Pater, Whitman, Housman – and added ‘Luca Signorelli?’ Alan Hollinghurst goes on, "I assume he had seen his frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral, in which the naked male backside is a pivotal feature, and jumped to his own conclusions."
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But, Signorelli, though he studied under Piero della Francesca, painted in the style of Donatello. That swagger! Hand on hip, leg turned out.... It was the Renaissance male pose par excellence... made famous by Micgelangelo... who is known to have stopped at Orvieto for a few days, but became so entranced by Signorelli's frescoes that he stayed several weeks. Rubin's book, Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art--puts everything in context! I can only imagine how fun it must have been to write...
Highly recommended if you love Michelangelo, Signorelli or Donatello.
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