The spread and eventual dominance of Christianity during Late Antiquity brought about global changes in relation to the human body. Religious dogmas separated the mental from the physical, programming man to believe in the immortality of the soul (the mental component) and the abomination and “sinfulness” of the body (the physical component). This affected works of art because the Christian paradigm primarily denied nude images. What was unexpected was that the new parameters of the body in art completely excluded athleticism and standard proportions of the ideals of Antiquity. In rare cases: in baths and private houses, Ancient statues occupied a place of honor as a reminder of the real beauty of the body.
But human life in the Middle Ages was not worth nothing. Prolonged wars and mass diseases devalued everything related to the pursuit of beauty. The body became common and shameful. The images that were found in those times in church paintings or statues depicted absolutely “not beautiful” bodies, which caused feelings of guilt and shame. The religious scenes of life showed the complete opposite to the desires of the human flesh. The beauty and eroticism of the body gave way to the shame and suffering of the soul. And this, of course, lowered the bar of the value of the person himself. To which art in the Gothic period reacted with deformed proportions of the body and faces with a mask of suffering. At this point nudity has almost disappeared from works of art.
“The Gothic artists…could not paint the nude because it was an idea – an idea which their philosophy of form was unable to grasp” [Kenneth Clark]
This “philosophy” led to mass “revenge” – the destruction of all the beautiful images of the ancient healthy body. According to the evidence of the sources of the late Christian period of the IV-V centuries. AD, aggressiveness and numerous attacks on sculptural images can be observed. As a result of such vandalism, the heads of the statues and signs of gender were particularly affected. What should be considered a fact of the war with the natural eroticism of the human body. The imposition of new “ideals” of deformed body forms, which were supposed to replace the promiscuous beauty of Antiquity, were supposed to instill a real religious awe before sin. But it naturally caused psychological complexes and guilt.
It is natural for a person to look up to his own kind in order to strive for flawless forms of his own body. Therefore, thanks to religious prohibitions and the aristocracy and elitism, which the Greeks tried to prove with the beauty of athletic images, love for one’s own body and the role of man in the universe lost its primary importance in the Middle Ages. Symbolically, such a transformation of concepts can be considered a complete loss of a person’s freedom of choice. The ideals of physical beauty, achieved through hard training and competitions, elevated the ancient man – warrior, citizen above the barbarians. In the dark times of the Middle Ages, they were replaced by images resembling a schematic human figure. Therefore, statues and religious images of saints look like a comical attempt to prove that the body of a Christian should be devoid of eroticism and sexual desire.
Such an external and internal change in concepts of beauty is a confirmation of the fact that nude art in itself carries an erotic connotation and promotes love for one’s own body. In order to deprive a person of the ideals that art demonstrates, it is simply necessary to prohibit the depiction of ideals.
In order to clearly confirm the sinfulness of the “basic instinct”, the church officially recognized the educational value of the image of the nakedness of Adam and Eve. Because Eve was given the role of a woman who doomed the female race to suffering. In the end, I think it was the perfect contrived excuse to ban female nudity in art! And with male nudity, something even more interesting happened. Because the most controversial naked figure of religious subjects was Christ with his body mutilated by torture, which became a guarantee of the complete absence of eroticism.
But in defense of artistic aspirations in the Middle Ages, I recommend turning to the “pleasant” exceptions. Progressive artists, under the guise of enlightenment, continued to paint from the true nature, boldly immersing nudity in religious subjects. I found interesting images in miniatures, where the drawings are nude images full of vivid eroticism, which, despite all prohibitions, prove the powerlessness of church prohibitions to remove the perception of physical beauty from the human brain. For example, in the Limburg Brothers in the “Chronicle of the Duke of Berry” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/470306 , the most instructive plot of Adam and Eve is more reminiscent of the scene of Adam’s violent seduction. And in book images, virgin martyrs are almost always depicted completely naked, at the moment of torture. This depiction of their torment focuses more attention on bare female breasts than on scenes of body abuse. The question arises: why was it forbidden to depict the erotic body during life, and in order to mortify the flesh, women had to be undressed?
As a “favorite” image, I suggest choosing the phenomenally candid image of the Virgin by Jean Fouquet – Swing of a Melun Diptych, (1450, m. Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts) http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-paintings/melun-diptych.htm or https://youtu.be/MLXjqJhF_c8?si=mwnn8Elr8IwPTgkw
It is difficult not to notice the demonstrative exposure of the Holy Virgin’s breast, which does not look like feeding a child. And, taking into account that experts have proven that the model’s name is Agnes Sorel. Better known as “Madame Bothe” – a favorite of King Henry VII, who became famous for her “immodest” behavior: showing her bare breasts. Jean Fouquet’s intentions to depict “holiness” are questionableJ
In my opinion, erotic images in the Middle Ages did not disappear anywhere, they simply changed the perspective of the image, and the most daring questions of artists contain facts that confirm the powerlessness of religious prohibitions to erase interest in the beauty of the naked body from the human brain.
In the following story, I will introduce you to the most progressive images that will completely break the stereotype of the lack of eroticism in the Middle Ages.