‘A buffet of bums, boobs and bollocks’ – Giulio Romano at Palazzo Te

Luke Syson | Apollo | 7th December 2019

The Italian Renaissance was not all high-minded intellectualizing. There was also a lot of thought about sex. While street posters of erotic images were considered pornographic, bawdy paintings, luxuriously detailed and in a palace, were respectable. Romano’s paintings in Palazzo Te are the most celebrated series of sex scenes of the Italian Renaissance. Titillation was not the only aim. “The phallic [was] less straightforwardly sexual and more about power.”