In the library once during my graduate studies I came across a reconstruction of a series of erotic drawings by Giuliano Romano, a pupil of Raphael.
The mostly-lost original (church, burning, you know how it goes) featured poems by a writer named Pietro Aretino. The poems, and Aretino's introduction, were reprinted in the reconstruction.
I read the introduction, which, if you scroll down, you can find here. (You know the deal, this is explicit material, you should only access it if you know good and well that you're old enough and it's okay where you live.)
I never forgot Aretino's central, beautifully simple, powerful and irrefutable demand, which I remembered as: "Why should we not look upon what pleases us?"
The facing plate was a lovely drawing, extravagantly fleshy and heavy in the Renaissance way, of a couple in sex; I seem to remember that the artist had drawn what was going on inside too, so we could see what made their faces burn from within with such intensity and exaltation. As I studied it, Aretino's question hung over me: "Why should we not look upon what pleases us?"
There are moments that forge us, that make us more conscious and intentional. For me, this was one of them. I lived in a time and place where that question was not really necessary to ask; after all, there I was, looking at this book in a university library in perfect freedom. But Aretino hadn't lived in such a time or place. He'd put that question down on paper at grave personal risk. And that imperiled, almost extinguished act had helped to open the small doorway to this place and time. Our place and time. I felt moved and morally convicted.
See if you do too. Here is more of the introduction, as reprinted on the website:
"...and let the hypocrites take a flying leap; I'm sick of their thieving justice and their filthy traditions that forbid the eyes to see what most delights them. What harm is there in seeing a man mounted atop a woman? Must beasts be more free than we are?"
Oh, amen.
