A satiric mode with roots in the ancient author lucian

And epitomized in the Renaissance by the poet

Francesco Berni's consumption of grotesque beauty

and I will talk more about him in a bit

Giulio's composition is a sort of visual

a witty jest in the spirit of the anecdotes of among others

Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Machiavelli

amusing tales involving unlikely lovers

including old husbands and young wives

and of course leaving aside a literary parallels

the juxtaposition of his face with her rear end

a quintessential display of Giulio's lewd

and rather sophomoric humor

would always have been good for a laugh

and here another detail

I just want to show Giulio's ceiling painting

of Apollo and his chariot

most artists draw that, depict that from the side

he draws it so that you are looking straight up

and they would have laughed too in the 16th century

Giulio's drawing is close in spirit and subject matter

to his designs for the notorious series of prints

known as the Modi, which loosely translated

means the ways or positions

sixteen scenes of couples fornicating

these were engraved

by Raphael's printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi

and I should say that no original images of these survived

they were censored

so we know the images through some fragments

and through some various later copies

and reproductions of engraving and wood cuts

and I am showing you just details of some of the cropped fragments

as well as the wood cut copies

and a later set of images

much later to still preserve the composition

Petro Aretino whose lewd sensibility lurks in these images

authored a series of sixteen suitably

lewd sonnets

that were circulating in Rome

at the same time as the prints

he almost certainly

had a part in the genesis of the Modi

one can in fact imagine him proposing

this inspired project to Giulio

his friend from their heady youthful days

at the villa of Agostino Chigi

the impressive variety of acrobatic poses

that Giulio's figures display

vareata or variety was among vareata

the most prized artistic virtues in this period

that range of poses is echoed in the recitation of sexual positions

offered by Aretino's Nana

one likes his meat rear and another likes it well done

and they come up with the horizontal shuffle

legs in the air

side saddle

the crane

the tortoise

the church steeple

the relay

the grazing sheep

and other postures stranger than the gestures of a mime