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"This book is the first comprehensive study of images of rape in Italian painting at the dawn of the Renaissance. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Pâeter Bokody examines depictions of sexual violence in religion, law, medicine, literature, politics, and history writing produced in kingdoms (Sicily and Naples) and city-republics (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna, and Padua). While misogynistic endorsement characterized many of these visual discourses, some urban communities condemned rape in their propaganda against tyranny. Such representations of rape often link gender and aggression to war, abduction, sodomy, prostitution, pregnancy, and suicide. Bokody also traces how the new naturalism in painting, introduced by Giotto, increased verisimilitude, but also fostered imagery that coupled eroticism and violation. Exploring images and texts that have long been overlooked, Bokody's study provides new insights at the intersection of gender, policy, and visual culture, with evident relevance to our contemporary condition"--
List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. Victims of lust; 3. Medicalized misogyny; 4. Rape as a weapon of war; 5. Political allegories; 6. Abduction in illustrated romances; 7. Lucretia and the renaissance rape.
About the author
Péter Bokody is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Society and Culture at the University of Plymouth. He is the author of Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–1350): Reality and Reflexivity (Routledge, 2016) and the co-editor of Renaissance Metapainting (Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020).
Summary
This book is the first comprehensive study of rape in Italian painting at the dawn of the Renaissance. It examines depictions of sexual violence in religion, law, medicine, literature, politics, and history writing. It offers a historical reconstruction of multiple views that have evident relevance to our contemporary situation.
