The Boy Stripped Bare by His Elders

Abstract

In the milieu of fifteenth-century Florence depictions of adolescent males were self-consciously employed in the training and socialization of youth. What makes the heuristic art of this period especially intriguing, and even paradoxical, is its frequent homoeroticization of the young male subject. Here an effort is made to explain the reasons why this homoerotic element appeared in Florentine portrayals of adolescent males and how it may have worked on a quattrocento audience. By paying heed to the social foundations for these images, one discovers that the artistic treatment of youth, instead of proclaiming a liberation from social strictures, served as an instrument in the enforcement and reproduction of patriarchal authority.