Ecstasy

BBC Four’s new series on the Baroque got off to an excellent start last night, with, among other good things, the thorough debunking, both of the nudge-nudge attitude to the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila, and of all the rubbish spouted about Caravaggio.

As Germaine Greer (not an author often cited approvingly on here) writes in The Boy (certainly not a book often cited approvingly on here), to suggest that the Renaissance masters painted naked youths because they were pederasts is like suggesting that they painted still life because they wanted to have sex with it or because they were hungry.

The best, even the only, way to understand Caravaggio is as a Catholic devotional artist, as the titles of numerous of works make perfectly clear; those titles need to be taken at face value, and the works evaluated accordingly.

The same may be said of most, if not all, the Renaissance masters, beginning in each case with the paucity, if not the absence, of evidence for the notion that their works are somehow supposed to be pornographic, or at least erotic. The “religious dimension” needs to be taken with absolute seriousness, and the relationship between Classicism and Christianity (especially Catholicism) acknowledged.

Where, then, does that leave the concept of the Renaissance?