The Perception of Men's Intimacy in the Fin de Siècle: A Consideration via Delville's The School of Plato

Abstract

Jean Delville's The School of Plato (1898) is remarkable not only as a statement piece of fin-de-siecle occulture, but also for its bold portrayal of Plato's pupils as a group of ephebes in intimate association. The canvas and its reception history lend themselves uniquely to a consideration of the complexities of an art-historiographical engagement with representations of male love, yet the majority of scholars have tended to subsume the work's 'homoeroticism' under Delville's occult preoccupations. In this essay, I attempt to unpack the male intimacy pictured by aligning art-historical analysis with queer theory and gay and lesbian history, seeking to suggest ways in which the painting may have straddled the line between normativity and deviance. I argue that its affinity with newly compact categories of subversive sexuality - then to an unprecedented extent in the public eye in Belgium - may help account for the government's stubborn refusal to purchase the work.