Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 5 of Sexual Personae

[Note 1]

Timeline: Rome to Rousseau, with a focus on the Renaissance

--380 CE - Christianity becomes the state religion of the Roman Empire; the birth of Catholicism ("Catholic" means "universal")

--450 CE - Fall of the Western Roman Empire: Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, etc. sack Rome

--450-1400 CE - The Middle Ages: The Catholic Church is chased out of Rome by the barbarians and then out of the Mediterranean region and southern Europe in general by Islam. It begins to rebuild in northern Europe as a safe haven. The Middle Ages in Northern Europe (450-1400 CE) are ruled by the concept of the Great Chain of Being representing the hierarchy of life and society (God and angels at the top; monarchy, nobility, tradesmen, peasants, and slaves in descending order in the middle; and animals, plants, and minerals at the bottom) (p. 140). Art is ascetic and two-dimensional: abstract, straight-lined, and favors a moral message over natural representation (see Glittering Images, p. 35-37).

--1350-1650 - The Renaissance: Overall, the Renaissance was about renewal of interest in the pagan (pre-Christian) Classical period of ancient Greek literature and early Roman literature. Three things lead to the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance:

• 1204: The Byzantine empire (the Eastern Roman Empire and the cradle of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, based largely in Greece and Turkey) is at war with Islam. Starting from 1204 and the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, scholars are leaving Constantinople and coming to northern Europe with knowledge and books from Classical times. Those books from the pagan/pre-Christian period of ancient Greece and early Rome were previously unknown to Europe and the Catholic Church. (Eventually the Byzantine Empire falls in 1450.)

• 1250: The Catholic Church is rebuilding Christianity in the west, hence Thomas Aquinas, Arthurian legend, etc. around 1250. The Church takes an interest in the Classical literature appearing from Constantinople starting in 1204 as an opportunity to research early Christian documents & sources. It starts copying, incorporating, and circulating Greek and Latin texts and ideas in northern Europe.

• 1348: The Black Death in 1348 - a bubonic plague kills up to 40% of Europe's population and leads to the breakdown of social order (pp. 140-141). Pagan ideas and texts from Constantinople had been circulating in northern Europe for 100 years at this point; social breakdown allows in paganism at the social level, releasing the amoral side of the Western eye: "sex and aggression are amorally fused." (p. 140)

--The Renaissance is broken into two periods:

• 1350-1500: The Early Renaissance: Before 1350, art in the Middle Ages was ascetic and two-dimensional, such as church icons that focused on a moral message. The Early Renaissance, on the other hand, begins to incorporate a more naturalistic Dionysian influence (flowing lines, curves).

• 1500-1650: The High Renaissance: Gutenberg's printing press, the discovery of the New World, Michelangelo, da Vinci, the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Shakespeare, Galileo, etc.: The High Renaissance restores Apollonian order by restoring the Great Chain of Being, fixating on Apollonian art in the form of mythical heroes that borrow the form of Greek beautiful boys, and elevating social order to a guiding principle (have sex within the bounds of marriage, etc.)

--1650: The Age of Enlightenment signals the end of the Renaissance but extends the Apollonian principle to the extreme, claiming to be able to use logic and structure to order everything, including music and art. 

--1750: Romanticism arises in the form of a Dionysian backlash against the excessive Apollonianism of the Age of Enlightenment: Rousseau says that man should sweep away hierarchy and social structure and be guided instead by nature, as discovered outside oneself (beautiful vistas) and also within oneself (natural drives and urges and desires).

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[Note 2]

Donatello's David: Paglia notes that the David statue is "blatantly homosexual in nature" (p. 146); she speaks of the boy's blatant effeminacy and androgyny and says that other commentators consider it hermaphroditic. But ultimately Paglia considers the style to be High Apollonian rather than Androgyne or Decadent/ExDion: She talks of its hardness of outline, its solipsism, the way it keeps the observer at a remove, etc. She says, "Italian art makes personality and gesture florid and theatrical, in the fascist Apollonian manner. [...] Its hardness and domination of space come from the artist's rediscovery of the authentically western will, inflexible and amoral. Art has rearmed itself with the pagan glorification of matter." (pp. 148-149) Paglia says that the David shows "high classic dignity" [...] He has true Apollonian iconicism." (p. 149)

 

[Note 3]

Paglia says that Leonardo and Michelangelo are Apollonian and are trying to master their world by science, research, and heavy-handed domination of the media they worked in. "For both men, art, science, and construction were intellectual substitutes for sex--not sublimation but undisguised aggression, a hostile domination of nature. [...] After the breakup of the ordered medieval cosmos, both men turned anxiety into megalomania, a fanatical expansion of the will." (p. 153) See also p. 158 on Michelangelo.

 

[Note 4]

Paglia associates da Vinci's Mona Lisa with vampiric tendencies, but ultimately Paglia concludes that Mona Lisa is an Androgyne. Specifically: Paglia mentions that Pater calls Mona Lisa a vampire (pp. 15 & 155); and Paglia herself associates Mona Lisa with the Vampire Gorgon (but also with Androgyne Nefertiti): “Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is the premiere sexual persona of western art. She is the Renaissance Nefertiti, eternally watching. She is unnervingly placid. The most beautiful woman, making herself a perfect stillness, will always turn Gorgon.” (p. 154) But Paglia also calls Mona Lisa hermaphroditic repeatedly and talks about Mona Lisa's self-containment. "Her blankness is her menace and our fear. She is [....] another hermaphrodite deity pleasuring herself in mere being." (p. 154) In the end it seems that Paglia considers Mona Lisa to be a self-contained Androgyne who leans toward vampirism (which shows up in the Gorgon's watchful stare).

 

[Note 5]

Leonardo's The Virgin with Saint Anne shows Mary and her mother as two women of roughly the same age (doubling of a single person) and in strained or awkward poses. Paglia considers Leonardo's The Virgin with Saint Anne to be Androgyne: "Leonardo's suffocating doubling of figures in The Virgin with St. Anne is another version of Mona Lisa's stolid, self-contained hermaphroditism." (p. 157) Paglia sees an Apollonian approach in the clarity and sharpness of the style and background; but she also see a Dionysian element in the "doubling" of the characters. Paglia considers "doubling" and "multiplicity" to be Dionysian. The Dionysian influence enjoys collectivism, change, profusion, and confusion;  Apollonianism, by contrast, prefers to isolate things and people, pin them down, and study them close up. Hence "doubling" in this painting represents a Dionysian influence in an otherwise Apollonian style. Paglia says, "The theme of Leonardo's two paintings is the same: the male eye and psyche flooded by female power." (p. 157) Thus one finds "hermaphroditism" in the mix of male and female, resulting in an Androgyne.

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~Posted June 18, 2024