Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th Century) ed. by Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th Century) ed. by Sara F. Matthews-Grieco Frank Swannack Matthews-Grieco, Sara F., ed., Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th Century) (Visual Culture in Early Modernity), Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 326; 12 colour, 48 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £70.00; ISBN 9781472414397. The volume challenges the notion that the transgressive nature of early modern sexual culture is self-evident. In Part I, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio follows the controversial life of the Florentine Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello. She examines Bianca’s relationship – despite being married to Piero Buonaventuri – with long-standing lover Francesco de’ Medici. Interestingly, Piero was a willing cuckold or wittol having been given a job by Francesco to support Bianca, while also being a philanderer himself. Musacchio unpacks the ensuing complexity through popular Florentine conceptions of adultery, cuckoldry, and house scorning. Molly Bourne investigates the accusations of impotency against Vincenzo Gonzaga. Early modern physicians tested his virility with the ‘trifold operation of erection, penetration and ejaculation’ (p. 41). Bourne’s fascinating essay identifies how a prince’s sexual performance becomes a state concern. M. A. Katritzky examines the skimmington or social shaming ritual in Samuel Butler’s three-part poem Hudibras (1664). Through magical impotence, Sir Hudibras is targeted by skimmingtons enabling Katritzky to discuss popular seventeenth-century shaming methods. Furthermore, the close association between impotency and cuckoldry emphasises how ‘skimmingtons publicly humiliate weak husbands no less than dominant wives’ (p. 73). Katritzky concludes a stimulating essay by stating how Butler’s poem serves as a social and political satire. Part II begins with Matteo Duni examining how impotency in the Renaissance could be explained by many widespread causes depending on circumstances. In a critical overview, Duni discusses bad humours, satanic intervention, magic spells, inexperienced youth, and marital incompatibility. Laura Giannetti analyses food recipes that invigorate sexual performance. With the subtitle ‘Renaissance Viagra’, Giannetti investigates the popular sixteenth-century comic trope of an old man falling for a young woman, in particular, the old man’s search for a sexually charged potion. Through a fascinating examination of the enhancing qualities of plants, vegetables, spices, seeds, and fowl, Giannetti unpacks Renaissance anxieties over procreation and old age. Meredith K. Ray critiques sixteenth-century Italian books of [End Page 335] secrets or alchemic sexual remedies. She investigates tests for female virginity and increasing male potency that protected men from cuckoldry. The essays in Part III analyse visual representations of cuckolds in early modern art with numerous paintings and drawings being reproduced in the book. Francesca Alberti examines Christian tradition and classical mythology in European art by comparing two husbands: Joseph and Vulcan. Both husbands are old with young wives to imply they are cuckolds. Alberti’s detailed examination of the visual imagery featuring the two husbands finds an artistic obsession with the cuckold. Christiane Andersson examines portrayals of cuckolds associated with impotency in early sixteenth-century northern Swiss art. Andersson focuses on two Swiss artists, Niklaus Manuel and Urs Graf, both of whom served as mercenary soldiers. Their drawings depicted mercenaries made vulnerable by military service and their domineering women. In great detail, Andersson studies the bestial imagery associated with cuckoldry, and how men became sex slaves to promiscuous women. In an entertaining and thought-provoking essay, Louise Rice critiques the comic drawings of the early seventeenth-century Florentine painter Baccio del Bianco. The rich visual style of Baccio’s artwork pervades every popular facet of cuckoldry in literary and visual culture. Rice finds every kind of horn associated with cuckoldry including a snail’s. In addition, she surmises from Baccio’s black chalk drawings that becco, the Italian for goat and cuckold, also refers to a bird’s beak as a ‘pecker’. Cuckoldry and its various associations became a potent comic force in Baccio’s prurient imagination. The editor, Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, ends the volume with seventeenth-century Parisian print culture’s unprecedented social and commercial interest in cuckoldry. Her insightful study focuses on print culture as a primary source. Matthews-Grieco discovers marital conflict and unsociable behaviour, such as defecation and drunkenness, ripe for social satire. More seriously, the Parisian prints convey...