Lecture 3: Medieval Bodies

Historical context

• Time period: 500-1500 CE (6th-16th century)

  • BUT this lecture focuses on the late European Middle Ages (1200-1500 CE)

• Traditional focus on Europe

• Increasing persecution of sodomia

  Role of objects/art:

(1) Could be complicit in their persecution

(2) BUT can serve as a space in which narrative subjects were NOT always subjects to the same scorn

Why study the medieval body?

1. Misconceptions about the Medieval body

(1) Aesthetically different appearance/stylisation

• E.g. vs. focus on the human form, naturalism & musculature in the Renaissance (14th-17th century)

• Medieval bodies aesthetically judged as simplistic/ugly

• BUT this is due to artists having different priorities compared to other periods (e.g. vs. humanist spirit in the Renaissance)

(2) Medieval European objects tend to foreground hegemonic subjects (e.g. white Europeans)

• BUT if you know how to look at them correctly, they make way for the study of sexual, gender & racial minorities

• Apparent subversions of these systems (e.g. the gender binary) were an integral part of medieval Christianity & its images

2. Medieval people ARE their (depicted) bodies

• We can tell a lot about their personality, occupation, gender, status etc. from their illustrated body

• Especially depictions of bodies that were betwixt & between, changed/actively changing

  • Late medieval artists participated in & shaped a society-wide fascination w/ all that bodies could become

    • Played an active role in shaping bodies to their own liking ⭐

      • To reflect the desires, longings & fantasies that shaped their very being

        = made claims to the kinds of bodies & desires that mattered and which did not (whether through omission or outright condemnation)

How to study the medieval body?

1. Artists making bodies

   • Reading: Karl Whittington

   • Queering an object/image

   • The body of the artist in physical relation to the bodies (objects) they are making

2. Objects making bodies

   • Reading: Diane Wolfthal

   • Objects that shape relationships between bodies

   • The comb as an object potent w/ power & sexuality

     • Entanglement of the secular & the sacred

     • E.g. even courtly love images are infused w/ medieval Christianity

3. Attending directly to the visual language of bodies

   • Fluidity/mutability of bodies

   • Different types:

     - Internal

     - External

   • Different causes: in particular, desire

Provenance & Historical context

Régime du corps manuscript: Creation of Adam and Eve (ca. 1440-50)

Provenance

• Image is the frontispiece of the Régime du corps

  • Very popular household medical compendium

  • 1st medical treatise written in a vernacular language (NOT in Latin)

  • For a European audience

Historical context

1. Theory of the 4 humours

   • The human body is composed of 4 humours

     (1) Blood (= sanguine)

     (2) Yellow bile (= choleric)

     (3) Black bile (= melancholic)

     (4) Phlegm (= phlegmatic)

   • The 4 humours informs:

     (1) Health

     (2) Temperament

     (3) Personality/behavioural attitudes

     (4) The quality of a person’s body (hot/cold, dry/moist)

2. Science of complexion

   • Balance of 4 humours —> skin colour —> health

   • Tied to:

     (1) Gender

     • E.g. European women = cold & moist, depicted as white vs. European men = hot & dry, depicted as darker

     (2) A tool of racist thinking

     • The ‘wrong’ colour (e.g. pale, black, green) can be a sign of bad health

     • Can be a sign of ‘bad habits, a lack of sense and a bad nature’

       • E.g. belief that black women had a stronger sex drive as they had darker skin like European men

   • The human body is in a constant state of change as it’s impacted by the humours

   • Explains the science of physiognomy to help humans ‘care for the health that God gave them’

     • Attentive readers will learn ‘how one can, by nature, know man & woman from the outside’

       = medical lesson (learning how to read bodies & understand the type of care they require) is also a lesson in reading visual images

Description, Analysis & Interpretation

Régime du corps manuscript: Creation of Adam and Eve (ca. 1440-50)

Description

• Depicts the moment when God creates Eve out of Adam’s side ribs when he is fast asleep

  • Adam has already been created from the slime of the Earth

  • Adam is sleeping w/ his head in his hand

• Aldobrandino (creator of the text) painted below in the frontispiece

  • Standing in a pulpit

  • Wearing a lavish ermine coat

  • Pointing at the text

Analysis

1. Hybrid body

   • Sexually differentiated to some extent (e.g. Eve has breasts)

   • BUT more or less share the same lower body

     = perfect androgyny? Or monstrous body?

2. Adam & Eve suspended on the precipice of change

   • Their shared body as a ground zero for the creation & care of all human bodies (albeit white, European & Christian perspective)

3. Devotion to God precedes bodily integrity

   • Eve joins her hands in alert prayer even w/ her body half-formed

4. Parallel between Aldobrandino (creator of the text) & God (creator of humans)

   • Sense of authority

Interpretation

1. The frontispiece participates in the construction of religious & medical knowledge

2. Aspects of the illustration could be read subversively ⭐

   (1) The first humans are figured as an intersex body in all its beauty

   (2) Eve doubles as an image of the possibly female reader OR the patron Beatrice of Savoy

   • Who took on the roles of Aldobrandino & God in her own efforts to create & care for her family (4 daughters)

Provenance (3)

Base for a Statuette (ca. 1470-80)

South Netherlandish. Now in the Cloisters Collection

Provenance

• Made of boxwood (popular carving medium at the time)

• Likely had a statue of the Virgin Mary on top (similar South Netherlandish statue in the V&A)

  • May have been inspired by the Cloisters carving

  • Virgin Mary depicted as breastfeeding

    • The breast put to work in different ways

    • Mary understood as the new Eve

    • Through the incarnation of Christ, Christ was able to redeem all mankind for this original sin caused by Adam & Eve

• Depicts the events after the creation of Adam & Eve (‘The Fall’)

  • A serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge

    • She shares the fruit w/ Adam

      = the act of original sin; Adam & Eve transition from a state of innocence → carnal knowledge & sin

  • Their bodies undergo a physical change ⭐

    • Want to start using their body in lustful ways (NOT just for the purposes of reproduction)

    • Transformation of their bodies implies the transformation of all future bodies

      = Christians thereafter possess the same wayward desires & a weakened will to resist them

Analysis (4)

Base for a Statuette (ca. 1470-80)

South Netherlandish. Now in the Cloisters Collection

1. Tree of Knowledge w/ fruit in the middle

2. Apples morph into Eve’s breasts

   • Positioning of hands holding 2 apples before her chest

   • Eve’s lips put over the apple (which doubles as a breast)

     = highly eroticised treatment of the breast

3. Artist is playing w/ sight lines

   • From the front, we see 2 figures w/ longer hair = ostensibly female

   • When you turn the sculpture, a serpentine body is revealed

4. Snake looks almost identical to Eve

   • They not only have a similar face & hair

   • Eve’s body, from the side, is also snakelike

     = almost mirror images of each other

   • In Hebrew tradition, Adam’s 1st wife Lilith is the female-headed serpent

Interpretation (3)

Base for a Statuette (ca. 1470-80)

South Netherlandish. Now in the Cloisters Collection

1. Desire as a disruptive force that can change bodies irrevocably

2. Extra misogynistic reading of biblical narrative

   • A female serpent tempts female eve to eat the apple

   • Causes the fall of all of mankind

3. Condemns particular kinds of lust associated w/ the Fall

   (1) Desire for oneself

   (2) Same-sex desire

   • Fall under a broad category of sins called sodomia

     • Both understood as one and the same in medieval thought

   • Any kind of sexual position/sex act that was NOT reproductive

   • Belief that the cause of sodomia is the fall, specifically Eve’s perverse female desire

4. Such images can help us ‘catch glimpses of the acts, relationships and people who remain unnamed’

   • Can paradoxically prompt us to seek out & recover people precisely because of its condemnation of same-gender desire

     • E.g. LGBT individuals in the past, their lives, and how they suffered/were punished

   • Serve as a powerful reminder of the ways that objects can be complicit in the marginalisation & physical violence towards sexual & gender minorities

Saint Marin(e), Golden Legend (1445-1465)

Belgium

Historical context

• >30 saints changed their social sex & gender presentation over the course of their lifetime

  • Artists embraced their representation

  • Almost all F>M

    • Perhaps more socially acceptable due to the misogynistic idea that they are undergoing a kind of ascent (it’s better to become male)

Provenance

• The Golden Legend

  • A compendium of saints’ lives

  • Circulated throughout Europe (bestseller)

• Narrative of Saint Marin(e)

  • Noble virgin

  • Assigned female at birth

  • At some point their mother dies, and their father decides to join a monastery

    • Marin(e) wants to go with their father

    • To do this, they have to get a monastic tonsure (male monk haircut)

    • They enter the monastery as a monk

    • Eventually their father dies

      • Local innkeeper’s daughter accuses Marin(e) of impregnating her

      • Marin(e) gets kicked out of the monastery

      • Doesn’t try to defend themself

      • Eventually Marin(e) dies

        • Monks preparing their body

        • Realise that Marin(e) has female genitalia

Analysis

• Left: Marin(e) kneeling in front of an episcopal judge who holds a crozier

  • Before an open doorway

  • Being asked to leave the monastery

• Right: Marin(e) lying on their deathbed, with monks preparing their body

  • Fully clothed

  • Still wearing monastic habit

  • Parted curtain at the top could suggest some revelation about Marin(e)’s body

• Text: pronouns switch back and forth between male & female

• The artist had only one spot to create an image that complements the text = likely intentional in its creation

  • The artist has specifically privileged the saint’s desire to be seen as male

  • Even if it breaks w/ iconographic tradition & risks narrative confusion

  • By avoiding the ‘big reveal’ moment showing Marin(e)’s bare body (visual deadnaming)

Interpretation

• Visual narrative can also offer a world in which the transgression of a gender binary was NOT subject to persecution

Philip the Deacon baptizes Simeon Bachos (the “Ethiopian eunuch”) (1533)

Belgium, probably Brussels

Provenance

• Book of Hours

• Narrative of Simeon Bachos

  • Originates from the acts of the Apostles

  • Philip is traveling from Jerusalem to Gaza

  • Encounters the Ethiopian eunuch, Simeon

    • Who is reading from the book of Isaiah

  • Philip explains the meaning of the text to Simeon

  • Simeon then asks to be baptised

Analysis

• At the moment of conversion

• Philip & Simeon’s bodies underscore their multiple differences

  • Skin: Simeon’s black skin

    • Physical reality: epidermal race

    • Other qualities of a person: hermeneutic race

      • E.g. Emphasises geographic origin

      • E.g. the fact that they’re not Christian yet

  • Clothing: Simeon almost fully nude

    • Invites more visual attention on his black skin

    • Sexualises him - cloth gathers around his genitalia, large piece of white cloth in his hand call attention to his genital region

      • Which also marks him as different as he’s understood to be a eunuch

  • Posture: Philip stands tall, Simeon bends his knees & hunches his back

    = clear imbalance of power

Interpretation

• The black body as a rhetorical tool

  • Black

  • Not quite yet castrated

  • Participates in the construction of Philip’s own body & identity

    • As male, Christian & European (although he was actually from the Middle East)

• While bodily transformation here is consensual

• This representation suggests that Simeon’s body, upon becoming Christian, becomes a better one

  • Philip visualises this ideal

Karl Whittington, “The Cluny Adam: Queering a Sculptor’s Touch in the Shadow of Notre-Dame,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 8 (2022)

Background

1. Queering medieval art

   • Since the 1990s

     (A) Analysing a work “whose themes straightforwardly included sexuality/gender”, OR

     (B) Using a deconstructive methodology based in queer + feminist literary studies to explore an art object whose themes were NOT explicitly sexual/gendered

   • Goals:

     • Exploring a wide range of interpretations embodied by objects > seeking to pin down particular historical identities

     • To bring identity & experience to bear

       • To expose the structures of gender & power informing art creation

2. Unique context of premodern art

   • Most artists/makers are anonymous

   • Vs. later periods: artworks are more often understood to be expressions/extensions of self

     = easier to make meaning from issues of identity

3. Ovid’s Pygmalion

   • The sculptor fell in love w/ the statue he had carved

   • Prayed to Aphrodite that it be brought to life

     • Carved out of ivory

       • BUT manuscript paintings show him working in a scale only possible w/ stone

         • Life-size figure makes the erotic connection more plausible & palpable

   • Story was incredibly popular during the 13th & 14th centuries

     • Emphasised the intimate connection between sculptor & sculpture

     • Chisel as a phallic extension of the sculptor’s body

Karl Whittington, “The Cluny Adam: Queering a Sculptor’s Touch in the Shadow of Notre-Dame,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 8 (2022)

Provenance

Statue of Adam from Notre-Dame in Paris (1260)

(1) Was part of a sculptural program that once ornamented the interior south transept of Notre-Dame

• Program also included a Christ in Judgement and a counterpart sculpture of Eve

  • The loss of Eve is significant

    • Did the sculpture also contain key erotic areas that remained unfinished?

    • Was she also carved w/ the same softness & sensuality?

    • Was every part of both the front & back highly finished?

      • New layer of psychic engagement (complex bisexuality) in the sculptor’s role

      • E.g. if she lacked the evident eroticism of the Adam, may be read as evidence of the sculptor’s greater interest in Adam

        • Either due to queer attraction OR an identification w/ the figure

      • E.g. if her eroticism was even more pointed than the Adam’s, the opposite could be argued

(2) Was damaged in the French revolution

(3) After a series of sales/displays in museums, ended up in the Cluny Museum (1887)

Analysis of creation

Karl Whittington, “The Cluny Adam: Queering a Sculptor’s Touch in the Shadow of Notre-Dame,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 8 (2022)

Visual analysis

Statue of Adam from Notre-Dame in Paris (1260)

1. Original display

   • Adam & Eve in 2 niches

   • Adam to the right of Christ, Eve to the left

   • Adam & Eve would have been viewed from far below

   • Possibly could have been slightly angled toward Christ at the center

Adam’s head angled slightly down towards the viewer

= responds to this arrangement

Monumental freestanding nude

One of the only ones known

2 metres tall

While nude figures exist (uncommonly) in medieval sculpture, they are usually in a much smaller scale

Not actually nude

Genitalia covered by the leafing tree

Held in place by the left hand

Courtly & graceful

Long limbs

Narrow shoulders

Relaxed, confident

Calm, even features

Eroticism/sensuality

Reflects casual, confident eroticism of classical Greek & Roman nudes

Vision of fallen sexuality

Covered genitalia

YET shame is not truly conveyed by the figure ⭐

Sense of agency & intellect conveyed by Adam’s firm press of the fig lead against his groin

Must have been inspired at least in part by a classical Roman work

Monumental nudity

Sinuous suggestion of contrapposto

S-curve to the body

Sculptor’s complicated investment in the beauty of the body

Abdomen has musculature yet a softness more associated at the time w/ female figures

Buttocks carved fully in the round ⭐

Unusual in depictions of men at this time

Esp. when the sculpture was meant to be placed against a wall

Buttocks are significantly less polished & at a lower degree of finish compared to rest of body

Clear chisel marks remaining across this entire area

Vs. full completion on upper back & legs

Buttocks were not extensively restored

= suggests an unwillingness/discomfort w/

undertaking extensive periods of time to

sand & polish this part of the body?

Seems to have abandoned either out of frustration, annoyance, discomfort, or embarrassment