While most original classical statuary has broken free from the "Fig Leaf Campaign," we can perhaps still see some of the medieval and early modern attitudes towards nudity embedded within the image policies on social media platforms like Instagram. As recently as 2016, before a visit from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Capitoline Museum in Rome took measures to put naked statues in modesty boxes. Censorship continues in museum up to the modern day. This despite the fact that the original statues were often completely nude. Plaster casts of classical statues sold to wealthy men like the Carnegies and to many American museum collections in the 19th and 20th centuries still had plaster fig leaves attached to them in order to protect the eyes of the conservative patrons who bought them. the fig leaf sits nearby, not on the original hooks used to fit it on the cast. Around 1857, there was a fig leaf created for a plaster cast of Michelangelo’s “David” given to the Queen by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Queen was quite scandalized by the plaster David (just as Florentines had been in the 16th century), and thus the fig leaf was kept at the ready at the Victoria & Albert Museum in case she visited.Ī fig leaf cast in plaster used to cover the cast of David in the Victoria and Albert Museum. for popular classical statuary made into plaster casts. It helps to explain many of the plaster fig leaves made in England and then used in the U.S. Perhaps the most infamous fig leaf story involves Queen Victoria. Papal stands against nudity were a way of underscoring modesty and conservative approaches. 1846-1878) who actually desecrated statues and had their genitalia removed completely. 1693 –1769) who began to fully cover Vatican statuary with fig leaves, à la mode of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament's book of Genesis. Ide and other historians argue that it was Pope Innocent X (r.1644-1655) and then Pope Clement XIII (r. Marble, Roman artwork of the Imperial era now at the Vatican Museums. As art historian Arthur Frederick Ide notes on his academic blog, "the Council of Trent condemned nudity in religious art while most of the bishops and cardinals maintained pornography in their personal collections.Pope Paul IV mandated the use of concealing fig leaves, promulgating the church’s attack on nudity in art in a papal bull dated 1557." Popes like Paul IV began to speak out against nudity, but it was not until the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that the Catholic Church took a firmer stand. In part, this was a Catholic reaction to the modesty preached within the Reformation. These men wished to cover naked figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgement. As she notes, it was around 1541 that the "Fig Leaf Campaign" was begun by a fundamentalist named Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini, the Ambassador of Mantua. On her academic blog, Alberti's Window, art historian Monica Bowen has recounted the history of using fig leaves to censor genitals in the early modern period. This modesty wreath was in place until at least around the mid-16th century. Yet it was another David, by Michelangelo, that would cause a stir due to its nudity. When the 5.17 meter tall David (called Il Gigante) of Michelangelo was installed in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1504, authorities immediately placed a garland called a ghirlanda made of twenty-eight copper leaves around his waist in order to cover his nakedness. Donatello's small bronze statue of David from around 1440 is considered the first nude statue since antiquity (well, that we know of). The Renaissance brought about the revival of classical statuary and with it, nudity. Certain biblical scenes such as the crucifixion had nudity and numerous manuscripts transmit depictions of naked martyrs, but the shift to the use of clothing was a sign of modesty and Christianity that took root. However, the heroically nude statues of classical antiquity began to become a symbol of a "pagan" past within medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire.Īs classical archaeologist Troels Myrup Kristensen has noted, "In medieval manuscripts, naked statues on columns frequently served as signifiers of idolatry." Within western medieval art, nudity still played a role, albeit to a lesser extent than it had in antiquity. Classical statuary depicting heroic nudes and other types of naked bodies continued to be appreciated during the late empire. Well into the later fourth century, fig leaves were attached to the story of the Garden of Eden but were notably not applied to all works of art. The earliest depictions of Adam and Eve in the catacombs in Rome (from the third and fourth centuries CE) often show the two shamefully clutching fig leaves to cover their naked bodies.
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