Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Werner Hofmann: Venus ég és föld között / Venus between Heaven and Earth

figures (often with full frontal stance) do not appear to be seeking a partner. Their appeal seems rather to be aimed at the community. The standing figure dispenses and proclaims, while the lying figure wants to be the receptor. The latter offers herself, the former distances herself: she stands on a pedestal, even if the existence of the latter is assumed rather than seen. Such differentiation is only helpful if we do not allow our view of the figures to be narrowed by it, so that in the end we can only see two opposed patterns. Anyone who does not make the effort to sort out the artistic implications of the vertical and horizontal axes in relation to Venus, with whose iconography we are here concerned, is left only with an inflexible grid of co-ordinates, which loses sight of the innumerable intermediate types of image. Where should he locate Rembrandt's puzzling Bathseba, or the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca, who caresses her pregnant belly? Or Man Ray's photograph oiMeret Oppenheim, where provocative nudity is covered by a gesture of defensiveness and (!) expectation? Eve, as the Salzburg Missal shows, has an older sister: Aphrodite / Venus, with whom she shares the task of fascinating man with her sensuality. For this purpose the antique goddess is decidedly better equipped with qualities and suggestive attributes than the original sinner of Christianity. In other words, she is more positively endowed on a number of different levels,' and it is this that makes her a counterpart to the Mother of Jesus. Their roles indeed resemble each other on their respective levels, in that both reach up from the earthly to the heavenly. Mary's salvatory commission was legitimised in the breasts of the bride in the Song of Solomon: "With one breast Mary loved Christ as God, with the other she loved him in his human form. Theologians who made Mary emblematic of the genesis of the church itself distinguished in her person between a 'corporeal' and a 'spiritual mother'. With her 'body's breasts' she nourished her son with 'body's milk', in order to demonstrate to sceptics that Jesus did indeed have a human body and was a man, as well as being the son of Almighty God. With her 'spiritual breasts' she nourishes the children and sons of Jesus, who, as the community of believers, constitute the church."

6 In Plato's Symposium the "double nature" of Aphrodite is discussed. Behind this discussion lies a twofold conception of Eros.

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The older Aphrodite was the "motherless daughter of Uranus, to whom we also give the name 'the Heavenly [Urania]', the younger was the daughter of Zeus and Dione, whom we also call 'common [Pandemos].'" In the 15th century, Plato's dual Venus was brought into the discussion about the double nature of Eros by Marsilio Ficino. Edgar Wind saw in this the speculative background for Botticelli's Primavera [Spring] and and the Birth of Venus. He contrasted the sea-born Venus Urania with the sheltered Venus, who oversaw the rites of Spring. In her 'pear-shaped body' he saw an intimation of her earthly role as the goddess of fertility. Her partner, the Venus Coelestis, is also to be seen in two different guises: "her posture is that of the classical Venus pudica, [she] gives expression to the double nature of love, its sensuality on the one hand and its modesty on the other, a separation realised in the figures that accompany her." This is a reference to the picture's supporting cast: coupled lovers, Zephyr representing the West Wind and his consort Flora, storm in from the left of the picture and expose Venus to the "breath of passion", while the chaste Hora of spring [Eunomia] prepares to spread a mantle of flowers at her feet. Just how subtly the levels of meaning as between Venus coelestis and Venus vulgaris can be intertwined may be seen from Titian's enigmatic picture in the Galleria Borghese. (III. 2) Earthly and Heavenly Eove has exercised many art historical minds and continues to do so. The opposition of "naked" and "clothed"

—we recall the Salzburg Missal

—provoked in some interpreters a "sanctimonious bias," whereby the naked figure was not allowed to be the more elevated heavenly one, "unless she embodied chaste love." Edgar Wind argues for a tertium comparationis, whereby he sees both women as embodiments of a purified love that stands above the profane: "The beautifully adorned 'human' love is the more restrained of the two, for she understands her ornament as surrogate, whereas the unadorned heavenly love is something more passionate and fervent, as we can see from the container she is holding, from which darts a flame." This interpretation suggests the title "Amore celeste e umano."* Some two decades later Titian painted the goddess for the first time in the here and now, with his Venus of Urbino, 1538 (III. 3), whose origins are only recalled in the modest placing of her hand to cover her sex. She is the prototype of the passively available, lying Venus. The considered directness of her gaze reveals the self-confidence of a woman who, since she does not locate her partner anywhere in the picture space, instead addresses herself to the viewer. This is the art historical source of a type of visual interaction that stretches into the future as far as Manet's Olympia, the goddess from the demimonde. In the Introduction to his Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance Edgar Wind laid stress on the way that cross-breedings, such as those between pagan and Christian themes, continually lead to "reciprocal influence". That the consequent interweaving of pagan and Christian elements might lead to confusion was something that had been grasped by the anonymous author of the Eibri Carolini, the work commissioned by Charlemagne at the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea (787) to examine the question of the veneration of images.

9 In order to highlight the lack of clarity in images, and to raise the status of the word, our Anonymous pounced on the equivalence of Mary and Venus: "An admirer of pictures will be confronted with the representation of two beautiful women in pictures lacking a written label. He rejects both the unlabelled pictures. Then he is informed that one picture represents the Madonna and that he may not despise it, while the other shows Venus. Much confused, since both pictures appear similar, he then turns to the painter of these works and asks him which of the two women is the Madonna and which is Venus. Because one of the pictures thereafter carries an indication that it is of the Mother of God, it will be displayed, venerated and kissed; the other picture, because it