Carolyn Slaughter ´08

In her last semester of her last year at Connecticut College, government major Carolyn Slaughter ´08 enrolled in her first art history class.

By Carolyn Slaughter ´08

In her last semester of her last year at Connecticut College, government major Carolyn Slaughter ´08 enrolled in her first art history class. For Italian Renaissance Art, taught by Associate Professor of Art History Robert Baldwin, she tackled Bronzino´s complicated allegory, “Venus, Cupid and Time.” Examining the 16th-century painting through a 21st-century feminist lens, she found the artist´s message to his largely aristocratic, male audience reinforced their position in society yet also warned them of their susceptibility to feminine charms. “This interwoven moral message and eroticized image allows the nobleman to legitimately enjoy the physical, while giving him the satisfaction that his mind is superior to the female realm of carnal desires,” she wrote in her paper for Baldwin. Slaughter states her case in the following excerpts.

Bronzino´s “Venus, Cupid and Time” weaves together a humanist glorification and a moral condemnation of beauty and sensuality. It displays a world permeated with both female physical beauty and grave danger, revealing the nobleman´s hopes and fears that his lust is derived from the evil female temptress, utterly destructive yet too powerful to resist. Venus´s brazen nudity glorifies the physical, yet what lurks in the shadows reminds the male viewer that his mind is the sole avenue to a higher existence. Certain elements of the painting exploit physical beauty, while others underscore its superficiality, revealing the corrupted core beneath.

Venus´s and Cupid´s positions subtly incorporate a dark element to this otherwise light sensuality. Cupid appears wrapped around Venus, suggesting a snake enveloping its prey. His seductive gaze into her eyes reveals an element of cunning and power. Venus disarmingly holds Cupid´s arrow, aimed at the shrieking male head at left, presenting love as both the pinnacle of feminine playfulness and sensuality and a dangerous threat to the imprudent nobleman. Behind the lovers, the dangerous chimera and the anguished male provide a more conspicuous warning against the perils beneath youthful lust.

The ambiguous gendering of Cupid ties the dangers of lust to femininity. Cupid is abnormally effeminate, mature and eroticized; as much loving attention is paid to his backside as to Venus´s body. This reflects the fear that the youthful elite male is increasingly enveloped in a feminine realm.

The placements of Paris behind Cupid and the chimera behind Venus accentuate gender roles in the painting. The chimera and Venus together establish the relationship between the archetype of feminine beauty and the epitome of evil. The more physically endowed a woman is, the more treacherous a threat she poses to the otherwise rational male mind. The position of the anguished male behind Cupid foreshadows the grief of the Trojan prince Paris, who foolishly chose beauty over the wisdom of Minerva in the famous mythological contest. This establishes a cause and effect: Cupid´s surrender to female charms will ultimately result in Paris´s tragic anguish.

The personifications of Time and Fraud are also gendered to please a patriarchal aristocracy. Fraud is an older woman with black, empty eyes, portraying the feminine realm as a physical invasion into the masculine intellect. Time is a paternal male who guardedly eyes Fraud. Time is omniscient and revealing of Truth, reinforcing an exclusively masculine cultivation of wisdom.

Courtly values of mythology, leisure and allegory define and enhance the painting´s social commentary. Bronzino´s use of allegory is itself a product of masculine, courtly values. Allegory was considered an encrypted way to express truth, solely intended for and properly interpreted by the male aristocrat. Allegory in art was considered a product of the male mind, perpetuating the transition of art from a craft to an intellectual pursuit. This sophisticated communication of moral messages to the viewer symbolizes a triumph of the intellect over the corporeal: the intellect has exposed and can potentially transcend the dangers of sensuality. Bronzino´s use of mythological figures permits the nobility to legitimately indulge in a highly eroticized fantasy, and simultaneously appeals to their intellectual vanity by associating the aristocracy with a divine and perfect realm.

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