The Way Of The Ways - 1687 Words

The Way to â€Å"The Ways† I Modi—the â€Å"ways,† the â€Å"modes,† the â€Å"positions,† the â€Å"postures† —with such a simple name, I was surprised to realize that somehow this work had never crossed my path in all these years of studying the history of art. Even an advanced course focusing on fetishism, in art that is, failed to reveal to me the frankness of these drawings, while exposing me to similar subjects in arts ranging from the primitive, as produced by the first peoples of the Earth, to contemporary photography. These drawings were produced by Giulio Romano, a student of Raphael, in the early 1520s and subsequently engraved and printed by Marcantonio Raimondi. They form a series of sixteen images depicting a variety of sexual positions†¦show more content†¦Let us trace the way to I Modi. While one could begin this story with a look all the way back to so-called â€Å"primitive† art—which often reflected an interest in human sexu ality, if only based on concerns about fertility—it may be more appropriate to begin with a culture whose traditions have been clearly identified as having found their way into the ancient Roman psyche. That is, the culture of ancient Egypt. An example of this interest in human sexuality, and an expression of it in art, is Min, the Egyptian â€Å"god of male fertility.† â€Å"Representing masculine virility,† Min was usually â€Å"portrayed with an erect penis, which he typically grasped in his left hand.† As the ancient Romans were connected to certain areas of what is now known as Egypt, and as it has been shown that they adopted â€Å"the worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis† sometime in the first century BC, it may be reasonable to assume that they were familiar with such gods as Min, and may have even discovered some of these aforementioned depictions. As one continues to trace the history of sexuality and the erotic image leading up to the production of Giulio Romano’s I Modi, a logical stop along the journey would be ancient Greece. As time and space limit the scope of this analysis, direct examples from the art and culture of this region will not be examined. However, the contribution of the Greeks to the art,