Originally Posted by
Syme
Yeah, I'm familiar with the debate on Caravaggio's sexuality, and in fact I'd agree that his body of work, looked at in it's totality, suggests a preoccupation wwith naked boys. What I'm saying, hoever, is that the pictures you posted in the OP aren't, in and of themselves, "overtly and unashamedly erotic". They show naked figures, that's all; the figures aren't doing anything particularly suggestive, they're just standing there with their dicks showing. If that makes them inherently erotic, then a huge portion of art from that period (and others) is "erotic" too. Amor Vincit Omnia isn't any more erotic, in and of itself, than Michelangelo's David, or El Greco's Laocoon, or Perugino's Apollo and Marysas, or any other artistic work depicting nude figures with exposed genitals. After all, as I said earlier, painting figures in the nude was pretty standard procedure back then. It's only when you look at Caravaggio's whole body of work, and see that he seemed to have heavily favored adolescent boys as his nude models, that the sexual dimension at work there is suggested. I don't think that any reasonable person can claim that any given painting of those nude boys is inherently erotic, unless they are prepared to claim that ALL paintings of nude figures are inherently erotic.
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