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

carries the name of Venus, the mother of the fugitive Aeneas, will be thrown away, denigrated and cursed. Yet the two pictures represent the same figures, have the same colouring and are made with the same materials; only the their description differs."

10 Berthold Hinz is surely right, when he posits for the anonymous author a "purely theoretical standpoint" on this matter, since there cannot have been any pictures in the 8th century where the formal analogies would justify such a confusion in the viewer. If we do not choose to regard the author as a highly resourceful heretic, manoeuvring between the fronts of the iconoclasts and the venerators of icons, we may instead locate the imaginary comparison of Venus and Mary in its proper context of a "sense of the possible" ["Möglichkeitssinn" of Robert Musil] far ahead of its time. Of course, the speculative attitude it implied only received endorsement after more than a thousand years had passed, when Edvard Munch painted a "Madonna" with an erotic "charm". (III. 4)

u Nonetheless there is indeed a Florentine Triumph of Venus from the late 14th century in which the characteristics of "Heavenly and Earthly Love" are combined in a brilliantly conceived combination of the Christian and the pagan. (III. S)

]1 The graphic image is placed in a polygonal format. The almost circular dodecagonic frame is not a quadro in the sense of an "open window": it directs the expectation of our eye towards a central trans-empirical event, or rather a symbolic pictorial idea. The eye's expectation is satisfied by the figure of a naked woman just beneath the upper edge of the frame. She is placed in a mandorla-like oval frame flooded with rays. A pyramid of rays emanating from the uncovered sex of the woman carries our gaze to the eyes and heads of the kneeling men, who form a half-circle of adorers and supplicants. Or is it that the rays begin with the men and end at the vulva? Who is the object of adoration in this case? The nude woman is flanked by two satellite figures, which perhaps correspond to Amors armed with bows and arrows, insofar as it is possible for us to decipher the iconography. Assistance in doing so is at hand, however, in the form of the labels for the six adorers, who turn out to be Achilles, Tristan, Lancelot, Samson, Paris and Troilus. The fates of these famous lovers were familiar to educated people through the Roman de Troie (circa 1165), Dante's Divina Commedia and Petrarch's Trionfi. ' ' That permits us to speculate that the standing figure represents the ancient Goddess of Love, as indeed the title of the picture confirms. Now, however, the representation becomes double-layered, thus susceptible of several interpretations. On the one hand, the rays emanating from the vulva are of such indecency that they have no known parallel. On the other hand, the abandoned gesture of the hands distinguishes the nude from all the traditional Venus types, that are depicted covering their sex - right up to Botticelli's Venus. Finally, the central focus of visual tension lies with the shining, sheltering oval, that we know from Christian art as the mandorla. The lozenge form has long been recognised as a symbol of the female genitals. It comes from a tradition of pre-Christian rhombus forms and the lozenges on prehistoric vases. The mandorla in Christian symbolism points to the "gateway of life", thus to the incarnation of Christ and the virginity of Mary. By means of the spiritual aura of its oval "shrine", the nakedness of the Venus figure is dematerialised and made iconic, and her offered sexuality is removed from the reach of her adorers. The rays emanating from the vulva are the immaterial equivalent of the six-pointed star which rests on the sex of the planetary Goddess Venus in her traditional representations (III. 6)

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—an example of a paradoxical symbol that hides what it also accentuates. Insofar as the Triumph of Venus addresses the dichotomy between the heavenly and the earthly types, its painter presents us with the Eros of the Venus vulgaris, while simultaneously sublimating the same in a Venus coelestis. The abstraction of the icon is largely attributable to the aura of the mandorla, but also to the innocent gesture of adoration, that transforms the Venus itself into a supplicant. Taken together, these features make the figure a composite of Venus and the Virgin Mary. In other words, the profane Venus cult is sacralised, while the Marian cult, not without blasphemous overtones, is sexualised. (We are of course familiar with the type of sexualised Madonnas, whose sexual attraction is however limited to the tempting exposure of breasts; for example, when such breasts are flaunted before the damned in Purgatory, ruled lines are seen to run from the them, with their promise of succour, to those who are gazing at them.)" A magical spell envelops the six kneeling figures. Like an invisible protective bell jar, it elevates them above the empirical world: the carpet-like vegetation that surrounds them deprives the figures of a firm grounding and makes them appear to float on their knees. This magical enchantment is the medium for the picture's polysemy, the way in which its Christian and pagan preoccupations float together. With the Renaissance, such brinkmanship comes to an end. In a number of ways this is demonstrated by the Venus with the Organ Player, which Titian painted for Charles V (III. 7), who later gave the picture to Cardinal Granvella. Several later versions of this painting demonstrate the fondness for this theme exhibited by connoisseurs of painting and of Eros. In place of the vertical projection,

16 which places the Triumph of Venus on an elevated level of idealisation, we are confronted with figures located in a scenario of deep space that makes all the relationships material and visible in the context of a central perspective. A timeless parable has been transformed into an intimate moment. The gaze of the six kneeling figures was unmistakably (yet guilelessly) focused on the sex of the goddess, but they seemed to be looking with their "inner eyes". Everything was happening under the kind of spell that protects the sleepwalker: embarrassing indiscretions thus did not occur. Here, however, a voyeur stares with all the lascivious insistence of the male gaze on the (uncovered!) lap of the nude Venus. The standing figure exuding her erotic fascination becomes an available reclining one. The motif of adoration has lost its evocative and invocatory dimension and has been transformed into a modern role-