Classical Paradigms and Renaissance Antiquarianism in Giulio Romano's "I Modi"

Author(s): Bette Talvacchia

Source: I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Vol. 7 (1997), pp. 81-118
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
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 CLASSICAL PARADIGMS
AND RENAISSANCE ANTIQUARIANISM
IN GIULIO ROMANO'S IMODI

BETTE TALVACCHIA

tT he formal elements of Giulio Romano's all'antica style are

only the most apparent way in which his designs for a series
of erotic subjects, which were immediately known as I modi,
were indebted to classical precedent. As with Renaissance erotica
in general, I modi owed their conceptual basis as well as their style
to antique paradigms. Although none of Giulio's original drawings
is extant, their content and compositions are known to us through
various copies, and their cultural impact from the reactions of the
artist's contemporaries, which survive in many references from
diverse documents.' From the moment that the drawings were
engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi and distributed by Baviera in
Rome, probably in the spring of 1525, the Modi were notorious.
When Pietro Aretino composed his Sonetti lussuriosi to accompany
Giulio's Positions, and printed everything together in a volume in
Venice two years later, the combination of images, text, and book
became itself a paradigm for printed erotic representations that
followed, well into the eighteenth century (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4 on pp.
106-109). Focussing on just one nexus of the many cultural questions

I This essay forms part of a more extensive study that is to be published by

Princeton University Press. The book will deal with the history of I modi, and their re-
lation to subsequent printed sexual representation in the sixteenth century. I completed
research for the book and did most of its writing while a Fellow, and then a Guest
Scholar, at Villa I Tatti during 1995-97. I am most grateful for the generous support
and congenial atmosphere that I found at the Berenson Villa, which allowed me to com-
plete this project under the best possible circumstances. I would particularly like to
thank Bill Kent for his help and interest during the preparation of this article. For full
visual documentation of I modi, see the facsimile edition, which includes the sonnets
that Pietro Aretino based on them, edited by L. LAWNER, I modi (Milan, 1984) and in
English translation, I modi. The Sixteen Pleasures (Evanston, Illinois, 1988). An excellent
set of photographs taken from this same sixteenth-century edition is found in PIETRO
ARETINO, Poesie vane, ed. G. AQUILECCHIA-A. ROMANO (Rome, 1992).

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

posed by the creation and the reception of I modi, this essay will
analyze specific aspects of the ancient tradition of erotic imagery,
and explore what was known or imagined about it in the sixteenth
century, with emphasis on the elements that influenced the ide-
ation, formulation, and signification of the Modi.
Most Renaissance erotica adopted subjects from the literature
of classical mythology. Legends concerning the loves of the
heroes, stories of the Olympian deities' entangled affairs, and the
amorous exploits of Jupiter in particular, provided numerous
possibilities for descriptions of erotic situations. At the same time
the visual tradition offered a plethora of lascivious satyrs, seduc-
tive nymphs, and mischievous amorini as a colorful supporting
cast for every sort of sensual encounter. There was, however,
another legacy bequeathed by classical culture, one that chose to
leave all the great heroes and Olympians in their timeless realm
and to make ordinary, nameless mortals the subject of its erotic
representations.2 This approach had the powerful consequence of
abolishing the remoteness of the viewer from the subject viewed
and of increasing the sensation of barefaced voyeurism, since it
was no longer the gods, but the viewers' contemporaries, and
even possibly their neighbors, whose intimacies were now under
scrutiny. The removal of mythological references from scenes of
sexuality created a distinct genre of eroticism, without the
mitigating overlays of literary fiction or historical legend to dis-
tance, to excuse, and to cushion its reception. This is the conven-
tion that Giulio Romano followed in I modi, delineating sexual
situations outside the realm of mythology. He thus drew from an
undercurrent present in the antique tradition, but his re-introduc-
tion of it into sixteenth-century art caused great commotion from
the lack of an obvious, sanctioning cover of high culture.
In ancient Roman households depictions of veritable rather
than mythical protagonists in sexual situations typically appeared
as decoration on artisanal objects such as lamps, mirrors, vases,
and pottery, as well as more precious silver services. An early im-

2 OTro J. BRENDEL maps out an early distinction of these traditions, using the con-
cise term "sexual situations" for the non-mythological representations, which he sees as
"socially conditioned." See his "The Scope and Temperament of Erotic Art in the Gre-
co-Roman World," in T. BowE-C. V. CHRISTENSON (eds.), Studies in Erotic Art, New
York-London, 1970, p. 41.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

perial silver drinking cup, for example, carries an explicit s

scene featuring two handsome but unidentifiable personages,
whose representation was meant to entertain the guests who could
at the same time admire the finely wrought craftsmanship.3
Awareness of this ancient practice for the embellishing everyday
implements surfaced in the sixteenth century, and one remarkable
example has direct connection to the diffusion of I modi.
Knowledge of this object comes to us from a story recounted
about a chalice of precious metal whose interior was engraved
with intertwined couples. Their postures of copulation were based
on "Aretino's figures," which is to say, on some version of the
prints after Giulio Romano.' The vessel was the prized possession
of a French aristocrat who used it at table to test the discomfiture
of his female guests, rather than their connoisseurship. The pre-
cedent for the object, if not for the masculinist and questionable
joke, was a classical model. The reference to the culture of antiqui-
ty as well as the artistic value of the wrought cup would have
been the justifications for its appearance in the refined setting,
despite the vulgar effect of its use.
More surprising than the presence of sexual representation
within the context of smaller household objects is the appearance
of non-mythological, erotic subject matter in monumental form.
The remains of Pompeii show us that upperclass residences had
highly erotic frescoes painted in different rooms of the house.
New research indicates that, apart from mythological representa-
tions, frescoes of the most explicit erotic scenes, with "real hu-

3 JOHN R. CLARKE, "The Warren Cup and the Context for Representations of
Male-to-Male Lovemaking in Augustan and Early Julio-Claudian Art," The Art Bulletin,
75, 1993, p. 279 and passim.
4 See my article, "The Art of Courting Women's Laughter" in REGINA BARRECA
(ed.), New Perspectives on Women and Comedy, Philadelphia, 1992, pp. 213-222. The
Renaissance appropriation of this paradigm, i.e., a couple in a sexual embrace used to
decorate the interior of a drinking cup, is a significant reintegration of a classical motif
with classical practice. BRENDEL (op. cit. [see note 2], p. 37), argues that the motif of the
isolated couple, introduced in the roundels inside ancient cups, departed from the more
established patterns of erotic imagery used in banquet scenes, and posits them as "a
different iconographic type, and in Greek art, a new thematic concept having special
implications. The dyad, isolated by a frame, added to the sexual theme those conno-
tations of privacy and intimacy" not possible in the scenes of revelry. It is precisely this
iconographic type that Giulio Romano took up in his modi, and which another artist,
following Giulio's model, put back inside a banqueting cup.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

mans" rather than the legendary variety, were painted in t

rooms of an even larger sampling of Roman houses.5 In seve
stances, these frescoes contain an intriguing detail: within t
tion of the painted space the sexual act is shown taking pla
room that also has a representation of a straightforward erotic
situation displayed on the wall.6 This image within an image is a
visual trace of what the material remains imply; ancient Romans
were surrounded by displays of sexual activity devoid of literary
or historical allusions in the more permanent wall-paintings that
have survived, as well as in smaller panels that have not, and the
bedroom was an appropriate spot for their exhibition.7
Ovid provides additional evidence that the practice of
embellishing rooms with such images was widespread and far from
scandalous, in a poem written during exile to propitiate Augustus:
In your homes bodies glimmer, it's known:
artists have painted great men of old
and somewhere a small picture
portrays the diversity of sex,
the calculus of Venus.
Telamonian Ajax sulks glowering ire
barbarian Medea glares infanticide
and nearby a damp Venus
wrings her dripping hair dry
barely covered by the waters that bore her.8

S See CLARKE, op. cit. (see note 3), pp. 275-294, and the individual instances
discussed by the same author in The Houses of Roman Italy 100 BC-250 AD. Ritual.
Space and Decoration, Berkeley, 1991, passim and D. FREDRICK, "Beyond the Atrium to
Ariadne: Erotic Painting and Visual Pleasure in the Roman House", Classical Antiquity,
14, 1995, pp. 266-287.
6 For examples see M. MYEORWITZ, "The Domestication of Desire: Ovid's Parva
Tabella and the Theater of Love", in A. RICHLIN (ed.), Pornography and Representation in
Greece and Rome, New York-Oxford, 1992, pp. 131-157, and passim.
7 Apparently this was an enduring practice in the Greco-Roman world, since we
find Clement of Alexandria still condemning it with vehemence in his Exhortation to the
Greeks: "They adorn their chambers with painted tablets hung on high like votive offer-
ings, regarding licentiousness as piety" and "More than that, you behold without a
blush the postures of the whole art of licentiousness openly pictured in public. But
when they are hung on high you treasure them still more, just as if they were actually
the images of your gods." Trans. G. W. BUTTERWORTH, London-New York, 1919, pp.
137-139.
8 Quoted in MYEROWITZ, op. cit. (see note 6), p. 132, who also outlines the argu-
ment and bibliography for reading this as a description of Augustus's rooms, reading
"your" in the first line rather than the variant "our."

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

This passage is part of an apologia that Ovid makes on behalf of

his banned Ars amatoria, contrasting his own severe castigation
with the impunity of erotic themes and stories in the visual arts,
as well as in other works of literature. The reference, in the midst
of the several mythological subjects, to Augustus's "small picture
that portrays the variety of Venereal calculations" alerts us to the
distinction of the two categories of erotic subject matter, and to
one specific aspect of the more anonymous group: it shows a
diversity, or a varietas, which forges a strong link with the Modi.
Just as Giulio created in serial form his sixteen variations on the
motif of sexual embraces, apparently there was an antique con-
vention for the representation in pictures of the "diversity of
sex," and Ovid calls upon it in the Tristia as an explicit analogue
to what he did in the Ars amatoria. There is strong justification
for this, since in the poem Ovid creates a list, a kind of catalogue,
of all the positions women can assume during intercourse to
display themselves to best effect:

What's left I blush to tell you; but kindly Venus

Claims as uniquely hers
All that raises a blush. Each woman should know herself,
pick methods (modos)
To suit her body: one fashion won't do for all.
Let the girl with a pretty face lie supine, let the lady
Who boasts a good back be viewed
From behind. Milanion bore Atalanta's legs on
His shoulders: nice legs should always be used this way.
The petite should ride horse (Andromache, Hector's Theban
Bride, was too tall for these games: no jockey she);
If you're built like a fashion model, with willowy figure,
Then kneel on the bed, your neck
A little arched; the girl who has perfect legs and bosom
Should lie sideways on, and make her lover stand.
Don't blush to unbind your hair like some ecstatic maenad
And tumble long tresses about
Your upcurved throat. If childbirth's seamed your belly
With wrinkles, then offer a rear
Engagement, Parthian style. Sex has countless positions-
An easy and undemanding one is to lie
On your right side, half-reclining. Neither Delphi nor Ammon
Will tell you more truth than my Muse:

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Long experience, if anything, should establish credit: tru

Art, and let these verses speak for themselves!9

This cynical catalogue, with its mock-serious elaboration of po-

sitioning as camouflage for supposed defects, lists probable cause
and required remedy with the thoroughness of a scholarly treatise.
The insistent didacticism of Ovid's lesson in the crafting of love
turns his catalogue of positions into a manual of technique, end-
ing his instructions with a request for accreditation, asking that
all of his successful pupils inscribe their trophies with "Ovid was
my guide." The Ars amatoria closes on this line, insisting on the
characterization of the narrator as a certified teacher who pledges
results, which also opens the poem:
Should anyone here in Rome lack finesse at love-making, let him
Try me - read my book, and results are guaranteed!

The Ars amatonia was connected to Ovid's fall from imperial

grace, and it was banned from Rome's public libraries at the same
time that the poet was banished in 8 A.D., perhaps most offen-
sive exactly for its didactic pretences, which, following a certain
logic, would turn the poet into an instructor of the libidinous.10 In
Augustan Rome, Ovid's poetic course in seduction and sexual po-
sitions was accused of being a general inducement to loose-living,
and an incitement to adultery in particular. Ironically, Christian
culture took Ovid at his word and the Ars amatoria was valued
through the Middle Ages, with manuscripts and commentaries
attesting to its popularity as a teaching text. This favor continued
with the reading public when printed editions appeared in the
fifteenth century, thus assuring familiarity with the text throughout

9 Ovm, The Art of Love, Bk.3, 769-92. Quoted from OVID, The Erotic Poems,
trans. P. GREEN, Harmondsworth, 1982. All citations of the Ars amatoria will be taken
from this translation.
10 In his introduction GREEN, op. cit. (see note 9), pp. 44-59, gives an illuminating
overview of the problematics concerning Ovid's exile, which was pronounced years after
the An amatoria was written. After a pithy statement of the dilemma, "The facts of
Ovid's banishment are well-known, its true reason mysterious," Green discusses the
trouble caused by the "immoral poem" and the otherwise unspecified "error," which
are the two reasons given by the poet.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

the Renaissance."1 In the ancient world, however, the poet's pa

taking exposition of the ways and the means of sexual inter-
course, even if presented in a parodistic fashion, brought him into
risky contact with a suspect category of writing in the Greco-Ro-
man tradition, the ancient sex manuals. This genre was highly
specialized, consisting of handbooks that described in detail the
configurations of heterosexual coupling - a verbal ancestor of
Giulio Romano's visual representations, and like Giulio's draw-
ings no longer extant, known only by allusion or fragmentary re-
mains. Similarly reproved, the sex manuals were open to censure
for content that went beyond the bounds of moderation with
their focus on and iteration of sensual pleasures, and were decried
variously for shameless content and/or licentious treatment of
their topic; they are the apparent source of Ovid's passage con-
cerning postures in The Art of Love."2
The writers of the sex manuals were always very shadowy pres-
ences, most likely represented pseudonymously, with the loaded
distinction that female names have come down to us to indicate
authorship.13 Astyanassa, the servant of Helen of Troy, was the
legendary founder of the genre, linked to the title of a book, On
the Postures for Intercourse. This text, like the others of the genre,

11 See R. J. HEXTER, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, Munich, 1986, who also
emphasizes the didactic nature of the Ars amatoria.
12 This definition comes from the extremely informative article by HOLT N. PAR-
KER, "Love's Body Anatomized: The Ancient Erotic Handbooks and the Rhetoric of
Sexuality," in A. RICHLIN (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome,
New York-Oxford, 1992, pp. 90-111. PARKER translates the terms anaiskhuntos as
shameless; aselgeia and akolasia as licentiousness, and observes: "The sex manuals are
not blamed so much for being immoral - that is, offering forbidden pleasures - but for
being fussy, self-indulgent, and overelaborate about those pleasures" (p. 98). This is an
interesting cultural contrast with I modi, which were objectionable for the illicit pleasures
they offered to the viewer's gaze.
13 See PARKER, op. cit. (see note 12), for the nine names that have come down to
us, and for the implications of the female designations; this article also provides a list of
ancient sources as well as secondary bibliography. Parker presents nuanced arguments
about the double bind of ascribing female authorship. A warning not to drop too sum-
marily the possibility of actual female authorship comes from a sustained tradition of
allowing women some agency in the area of sexual concerns, since they have so often
been limited to a totalizing definition along these lines. There is, for example, the fif-
teenth-century case of Caterina Sforza, Signora of Forli, who wrote a treatise on the
properties of sexual cures and aphrodisiacs. See the information and bibliography in P.
CAMPORESI, I balsami di Venere, Milan, 1989, chapter 3, "Venerea voluptas."

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

is known only by name. Elephantis was the name that most cap-
tured the imagination of Renaissance culture, culled from refer-
ences in Suetonius, Martial and the collection of works known as
the Pniapea. Although the actual text of Elephantis is unknown,
her name was synonymous in the sixteenth century with manuals
of sexual positions and, by extension, with their pictorial represen-
tation. From Martial, Renaissance readers would be intrigued by
the following lines:

Too much, Sabellus, in your verses I have read

Of many lecherous ways of making love in bed.
Of such lascivious tricks, Diodym's whores know nought.
For them in Elephantis' books in vain I've sought.
You give new ways of doing it, one can't deny,
That e'en the most abandoned rake would love to try.14

The collection of poems under the title Priapea contains one

exhorting the god himself to learn from the teachings of Ele-
phantis:
Lalage gives to the hard-membered god
Pictures obscene from Elephantis' books,
And in return requests that he should try
With her to bring the deeds they show to life.15

14 This partial translation comes from W. H. PARKER, given as comparative

material in Priapea: Poems for a Phallic God, London-Sydney, 1988, p. 73. The Latin is
as follows (XII, 43): "Facundos mihi de libidinosis / legisti nimium, Sabelle, versus, /
quales nec Didymi sciunt puellae / nec molles Elephantidos libelli. / Sunt illic Veneris
novae figurae, / quales perditus audeat fututor, / praestent et taceant quid exoleti, / quo
symplegmate quinque copulentur, / qua plures teneantur a catena, / extinctam liceat
quid ad lucernam. / tanti non erat esse te disertum." MARTIAL, Epigrams, vol. 2, trans.
WALTER C. A. KER, London-New York, 1920, p. 348. This translation gives an Italian,
rather than an English, rendering of the poem. There were many editions of the
Epigrammata available to sixteenth-century readers, among the others an Aldine edition
of 1501.
15 "Obscaenas rigido deo tabellas / ductas ex Elephantidos libellis / dat donum
Lalage rogatque temptes, / si pictas opus edat ad figuras." / Both the Latin and the
translated versions are found in PARKER, op. cit. (see note 14), pp. 72-73. See Parker's
excellent study also for information about the history of the Pniapea's text, its author-
ship, and editions. The list of editions contains eight from the fifteenth century, as well
as one from the Aldine Press in 1517, and another Venetian edition, an Argentina from
1520, attesting to the popularity and availability of the Priapea at the time of the
composition and diffusion of I modi.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

Both Martial's Epigrams and the Priapea, two easily available

authoritative sources for the interested in the sixteenth centur
cite Elephantis's manuals for expert instruction in the position
love. But in the Priapea an interesting conflation of verbal a
pictorial occurs, where the lessons in these books are specifi
said to appear in pictures. Aretino manifestly knew this refere
and cites it in the dedication of his Ragionamenti; he then ap
it in his description of a group of paintings decorating the con
that is the setting of his first dialogue:
In the final panel all of the positions (modi) and ways of screw
and being screwed were painted; and the nuns are made to try ou
the flesh the actions that are depicted before going out to encou
their partners."6

Renaissance understanding of Elephantis, then, was com-

pletely justified in allowing that she was an author of sex manuals
whose texts were amplified through images. The resulting conven-
tion would use her name to indicate either pictures or books of
obscene content, sometimes not making a distinction, and some-
times referring to both in combination. The work of Elephantis
would have been the legendary pictorial paradigm drawn upon by
Giulio Romano when he designed his classicizing series of sexual
positions, as well as a lost literary model recreated by Pietro Are-
tino when he combined the modi with sonnets and had them
published in the form of a book.17
An astute observer and commentator from the later sixteenth

16 PIETRo ARETINO, Sei Giornate, ed. G. AQUILECCHIA, Bari, 1969, p. 16. In the
dedication Aretino mentions the Pniapea as a source of erotic literature, along with "cio
che in materia lasciva scrisse Ovidio, Giovinale e Marziale" (p. 4).
17 There were, however, other versions of illustrated books recording erotic
figures, less closely linked to the tradition of ancient sex manuals, and rather more like
picture albums. A. TosTi, Storie all'ombra del mal francese, Palermo, 1992, mentions a
book owned by Charles VIII of France, "in cui erano dipinte numerose belle donne
nude e/o in posture lubriche, ricordo di altrettante avventure galanti occorse a lui du-
rante la campagna" (p. 50). The album was taken as booty from his camp after a fierce
rout during his Italian campaign, at Fornovo, by the forces under Francesco Gonzaga.
This prize eventually ended up in the hands of Isabella d'Este, who, according to Tosti,
retained it tenaciously despite the King's efforts to get it back. A noteworthy coinci-
dence since Giulio Romano, too, ultimately made his way to Mantua where he was
closely involved in maintaining and expanding the Gonzaga collections, as advisor and
contributor.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

century, Pierre de Brantome, takes for granted the association of

Elephantis, figures, sexual positions, books, the Modi and Are-
tino, and refers to it in a knowing, if slightly jumbled way.
Speaking of husbands who burn with too hot a flame of passion,
Brantome more than once mentions Aretins, meaning the books of
sexual positions, either I modi or variants of them, which came to
be designated by the writer's name:
Moreover, what is worse, these husbands teach their wives, in their
own beds, a thousand lubricities, a thousand depravities, thousands of
moves, configurations, novel fashions, and they put into practice those
terrible positions of Aretino.18

However, the husbands who engage on these lessons with their

wives pay a heavy toll for their pleasure, because the women will
want to show off their new skills with others, reasons Brantome. Or,
other men will long to take advantage of the accomplishments of
the ladies educated in Aretino's school, as Brantome's next
anecdote recounts."9 Awareness of the possession of the figured
text initiates the action of the intrigue, peppered by the narrator's
insistence that the husband of the lady in question knew about
the Aretin in the cabinet and permitted his wife to keep it. Inev-
itably, the desire of the lover is fulfilled and Brantome emphasizes
the part that "Aretino's Positions" played as a sex manual in the
affair, as the theory that informed the successful practice, with a
word of homage thrown in for the potency of Lady Nature in all
such matters.
Immediately following these references to books of positions

18 "De plus, ces marys, qui, pis est, apprennent a leurs femmes, dans leur lict
propre, mile lubricitez, mille paillardises, miule tours, contours, faqons nouvelles, et leur
patiquent ces figures enormes de l'Aretin." BRANTOME, Les dames galantes, ed. M. RAT,
Paris, 1960, p. 26.
19 Ibid., pp. 26-27: "Je cognois un autre honneste gentilhomme qui, estant bien
amoureux d'une belle et honneste dame, s,achant qu'elle avoit un Aretin en figure dans
son cabinet, que son mary s,avoit et l'avoit veu et permis, augura aussitost par-la qu'il
l'attraperoit: et, sans perdre esperance, il la servit si bien et continua qu'enfin il
l'emporta: et cognut en elle qu'elle y avoit appris de bonnes le,ons et pratiques, ou fust
de son mary ou d'autres, niant pourtant que ny les uns ny les autres n'en avoyent point
este les premiers maistres, mais la dame nature, qui en estoit meilleure maistresse que
tout les arts. Si est-ce que le livre et la pratique luy avoyent beaucoup servy en cela,
comme elle luy confessa puis apres".

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

and Aretino, Brantome inserts a classical reference, comparing

compositions of Elephantis to the Aretine postures, nearly ske
ing the order of precedence in his allusion:
You can read about the great courtesan and learned madam from
ancient Rome, called Elephantis, who posed in and composed such pos-
tures as those of Aretino; even worse, the great ladies and princesses,
playing the part of whores, studied it as a most beautiful book.20

At the end of the sixteenth century Brantome repeats what had

been circulated earlier: that the postures in the book Aretino put
together stemmed from the tradition of Elephantis, and retained
the character of sex manuals. It is impossible to cite the source
for Brantome's information on the matter. However, one illustri-
ous early sixteenth-century text that makes the connection
between the Modi and Elephantis, which would have continued to
make the rounds among the centers of European culture at the
century's end, is still available to us and worth noting. The
Prologue to I suppositi of Ariosto puns on the suppositions un-
derlying the plot of the play, the printed positions spreading
through Rome, and the assorted modes of Elephantis:
And although I speak with you of supposing, my suppositions are
not similar to the antique ones, which in diverse acts and forms and
various positions Elephantis had painted; and which then were revived
in our time in Holy Rome, and printed in engravings more beautiful
than decent, so that the whole world has copies of them.2"

20 Ibid., p. 27: "Il se lit d'une grande courtisanne et maquerelle insigne du temps
de l'ancienne Rome, qui s'appelloit Elefantina, qui fit et composa de telles figures de
l'Aretin, encore pires, auxquelles les dames grandes et princesses faisant estat de
putanisme estudioyent comme un tres-beau livre".
21 "E, benche io parli con voi di sopponere, / Le mie supposizioni pero simili i
Non sono a quelle antique, che Elefantide / In diversi atti e forme e modi vari / Lascio
dipinte; e che poi ritrovatesi / Sono ai dl nostri in Roma santa, e fattesi / In carte belle,
piiu che oneste, imprimere, / Accio che tutto il mondo n'abbia copia". G. M.
MAZZUCHELLI notes this form of Ariosto's prologue in the notes to his eighteenth-
century biography of Aretino; in his annotations, the modern editor states that the
name I suppositi was also given to I modi, although I have not found this mentioned in
any other source. See PIETRO AREInNo, Lettere sull'arte, vol. 3, ed. E. CAMESASCA,
Milan, 1959, p. 142. Ariosto premiered the play in Rome during the carnival season of
1519, and then reworked it, adding the Prologue before its presentation in Ferrara in
1528. At this date talk of I modi would have been very much in the air, with the recent
publication (probably in 1527) of Aretino's book with sonnets accompanying the prints.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Ariosto's sly reference to this particular instance of classi

vival from pagan Rome to the "holy city" implies that mor
not changed so much from one epoch to the other. It also
cates that in the 1520s the name of Elephantis was so atta
to "instructive" erotic representations in any genre that her
legendary prototypes were sometimes described as paintings. Here
Ariosto conflates two recollections from the ancient tradition: the
name of Elephantis for sexual tutoring, and the existence of the
small paintings, or tabellae, which displayed explicit sexual con-
tent, to which Ovid referred in the Tristia. The combination, in
fact, finds justification in what can be established about Roman
cultural attitudes, since "the ancient sources take erotic paintings
to be didactic paradigms as well as aphrodisiacs."22 The relation-
ship between the sex manuals, with their pedagogy of the erotic,
and the figurae veneris painted on small panels or frescoes, has
been hypothesized by twentieth-century scholars as direct and
causal; in other words, that the paintings were copied from the
handbooks that contained illustrations and texts.23 A very similar
set of "suppositions" occurred to Renaissance scholars and
writers of history, which they deduced, however, not from the
texts alone, but with the additional aid of specific evidence from
the material remains of antiquity: Roman medals and coins.
Renaissance curiosity about ancient culture was fed by the
evidence found on coins, from which antiquarians discovered the
names and images of the rulers and their families, and learned to
speculate about the appearance of monuments whose actual traces
were gone or survived in ruins. By the second decade of the six-
teenth century Andrea Fulvio and Leonardo da Porto wrote the first

Since the original production of I suppositi took place in the orbit of Raphael and his
shop there would be another reason for including the topical reference. The master him-
self designed the scenery for its first staging in the Vatican. See C. L. FROMMEL,
"Scenografia teatrale," in C. L. FROMMEL-S. RAY-M. TAFURI (eds.), Raffaello architetto,
Milan, 1984, pp. 226-228.
22 This formulation is from MYEROWITZ, op. cit. (see note 6), p. 135. MYEROWITZ
stresses that the ancient texts emphasize the didactic function of the images, and cites
references to painted pictures of sexual scenes in Propertius, Pliny, Suetonius, Plutarch,
Athenaeus, Ovid, and the Priapea, as only a partial listing. There were thus numerous
sources from which knowledge of these paintings could be culled in the Renaissance.
23 Ibid., p. 148; BRENDEL, op. cit. (see note 2), pp. 62-69; and FREDRICK, op. cit.
(see note 5), pp. 275-278.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

numismatic treatises, and many others followed with an incr

expansion of scope and bulk.24 By mid-century the tradition of
numismatic study was well established, and Sebastiano Erizzo
made his contribution to the literature with a Discourse concerning
Ancient Medals, which contains an extended discussion of a par-
ticular type that he dates from the reign of Tiberius.25 He ends his
chapter on this Emperor with an astonishing series of connections
that ties together the coins, Elephantis's manual and figurae, acts
of prostitution, and mastery of obscene sexual positions. Recount-
ing Tiberius's retreat to the island of Capri as retirement to a life
of dissipation, Erizzo elaborates:
And he caused to be brought there, from whichever place he could
have them, a great number of women and boys and considerably older
youths. Beyond this he had certain masters come who taught the po-
sitions in which they could couple obscenely. These masters were called
Spintriae by him; performing before his eyes in these [positions] various
libidinous conjoinings; and he did this to regain the relish and the
stamina of his lost libido. And having rooms in several locations
furnished with couches for sleeping, in each room he ordered small pic-
tures to be hung, in which were depicted many extravagent postures to
take during the libidinous act, making them study certain lascivious and
obscene books, thus rendering each one learned in the positions and in
the acts of the libido.

Erizzo based this account on Suetonius (Tiberius, 43), staying

24 LEONARDO PORZIO, De sestertio (Rome, 1516); ANDREA FULVIO, Illustnium imagi-

nes (Rome, Jacob Mazzocchio, 1517). Other important sixteenth-century works are those
of ENEA VICO, Discorso sopra le medaglie de gli antichi (Venice, Gabriel Giolito, 1558);
and in manuscript, Pirro Ligorio left numerous volumes, now in Naples and Turin,
which are listed in E. MANDOWSKY-C. MITCHELL, Pirro Ligorio's Roman Antiquities,
London, 1963; JACOPO STRADA completed six numismatic volumes left in manuscript,
now in Vienna, Nationalbibliothek (CV9413-9418). For Strada see DIRK J. JANSEN,
"Jacopo Strada's Antiquarian Interests: A Survey of his Musaeum and its Purpose",
Xenia, 21, 1991, pp. 59-76; and ID., "Jacopo Strada: antiquario della sacra cesarea
maesta" Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1, 1982, pp. 57-96. For a general introduction to
this topic, see R. WEISS, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, London, 1988,
chapter 12, "The Study of Ancient Numismatics." For the scholarship of ancient med-
als in the context of other disciplines, see E. COCHRANE, Historians and Historiography in
the Italian Renaissance, Chicago-London, 1981, chapter 15, "Antiquities," pp. 423-444;
and F. HASKELL, History and its Images, New Haven-London, 1993, chapters 1-3.
25 SEBASTIANO ERIZZO, Discorso sopra le medaglie de li antichi, Venice, Varisco and
Paganini, 1559.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

very close to the information and to the sequence of its presen-

tation in the Latin text, which is the source of the term spintria.
The Latin word spinthria coarsely denotes a male prostitute, and
derives from the Greek sphinkter, the source of our own name for
the sphincter muscle. In the sixteenth century, spintria was un-
derstood to refer to obscene sexual behavior, the place where it
was practiced, or the persons performing it.26 From these mean-
ings Erizzo set the stage for a new application; he followed his de-
scription of the salacious antics at Capri with an invitation:
Those who would like to understand all the particulars, read
[Suetonius] Tranquillus's biography. But whoever would like to see the
veritable witnesses of this story and of his libidinous habits, all this can
be easily known from his medals in copper. [ ...] In such medals, as in

26 There were numerous editions of Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars throughout the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. F. PAOLO DEL Rosso produced an Italian translation
in 1554 (Venice, Grifio), rendering a crucial passage as follows: "Oltre a cio fe venire
alcuni maestri, che insegnavano i modi di usare l'uno con l'altro disonestamente, i quali
da lui erano chiamati spintrie" (p. 288). This translation, which dates to within thirty
years of Giulio's drawings, offers a suggestive combination of the words modi, disonesto,
and spintria, which I have kept in mind while formulating my ideas around the six-
teenth-century modi.
The word spintria is found two other times in Suetonius, in the lives of Caligula
(16) and Vitellius (3), in each case referring to practitioners of what was classified as
sexual perversion. Suetonius says that Caligula banished the spintriae from Rome; with
regard to Vitellius, the name is a precise reference to Capri, and provides a concrete ex-
ample of what is generally described in Tiberius 43: "Vitellius had spent his boyhood
and adolescence in Capri, among Tiberius's profligates. There he won the nickname
"Spintria," which clung to him throughout his life; by surrendering his chastity to
Tiberius, the story goes, he secured his father's first advancement to public office"
(trans. R. GRAVES, [Harmondsworth, 1972], p. 265). Commenting on this usage, E.
CANTARELLA defines it as "a very vulgar term, used to denote male prostitution," and
notes its appearance in Dio Cassius (63, 4, 2) and in Petronius's Satyricon (113,11) in
Bisexuality in the Ancient World, New Haven-London, 1992, p. 161. In his study of
classical erotica, FRIEDRICH KARL FORBERG has a chapter on "Spintrian Postures," citing
instances of the word in Latin texts. He notes the specific use of the term spintria
for conjoinings of three or more partners, and the similarity of the word to spinter,
the bracelet worn on a woman's upper left arm: "Spintries then are those who, linked
like the rings of a bracelet, thus accomplish the pleasures of Venus." See FORBERG'S
Manual of Classical Erotology in a facsimile of the 1884 English edition, New York,
1966, p. 181.
A sixteenth-century definition can be found in JOHN FLOIuO'S Italian-English dic-
tionary, A Worlde of Wordes (London, 1598), published in facsimile by G. OLMS,
Hildesheim-New York, 1972, s.v. spintrie: "places where were practiced, or men which
devised all manner of unnaturall and beastlie, or monstrous lust, leacherie not to be
spoken of."

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

published books, all manner of lewdness carried out at the behest o

Tiberius on the island of Capri is made known to posterity.

Just as Andrea Fulvio learned about imperial families or Pirro

Ligorio about architectural structures from coins, Erizzo sug-
gested that his readers could reconstruct the nefarious activities of
Tiberius's Capri by reading the surfaces of a group of medals mint-
ed to commemorate such wicked comportment (Figs. 5, 6, 7). The
author's comparison of the coins to printed pages is striking, and may
reflect an unexpressed mental connection to the stamped sequence
of I modi, issued just thirty years prior to Erizzo's treatise.
Perceiving these medals as straightforward illustrations of the
behavior of the spintriae (in the sense of sexual performers),
Erizzo put forth an interpretation that resulted in new numis-
matic terminology. The ancient medals portraying a range of po-
sitions of sexual intercourse came also to be called spintriae, and
were linked to Elephantis's postures, both textual and pictorial, as
practised by the "profligates" gathered together by Tiberius on
Capri.27 Erizzo's confident leap from Suetonius's descriptions of
Tiberius's debaucheries to the identification of certain erotic med-
als as their portrayal is engagingly imaginative scholarship, if not
convincing numismatic procedure. In fact recent studies prefer
the more accurate nomenclature of erotic tesserae, or tokens, since
they are not strictly classifiable as coins, and place their greatest
diffusion to the reign of Domitian.28 Erizzo's association of the
medals with Tiberius, however, has behind it an elegant and
eloquent reasoning that is not diminished by factual error.
Suetonius makes it clear that Tiberius had a penchant for being
surrounded with pictorial representations of sex when he was not
in the presence of its pageantry:
Then there was the painting by Parrhasius, which had been

27 For the numismatic usage, see Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Alt
tumswissenschaft, vol. 3, ed. G. WISSOWA, Stuttgart, 1929, s.v. spintria. The first stu
to re-initiate discussion of the spintriae in recent times is T. V. BuTTmy, "The Spi
as a Historical Source," Numismatic Chronicle, 13, 1973, pp. 52-62.
28 B. SIMONETTA-R. RIVA, Le tessere erotiche romane, Lugano, 1981. Also see their
further article, "Nuovo contributo alle nostre conoscenze sulle spintriae," Schweizer
Munzblatter, 136, 1984, pp. 88-92.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

bequeathed him on condition that, if he did not like the subject, he

could have 10,000 gold pieces instead. Tiberius not only preferred to
keep the picture but hung it in his bedroom. It showed Atalanta com-
mitting a grossly intimate act with Meleager.29

The implication is that the greed of Tiberius was outdone only by

his lust, and it seems that the bequest was intended partly as a
tease. This artist is particularly connected to the creation of
obscene paintings in the ancient sources. Pliny mentions another
work by Parrhasius that Tiberius owned, also kept in the bedroom
and most likely lubricious in nature, depicting Archigallus, the
eunuch-priest of Cybele.30 Cognizant of the stories attached to the
life of Tiberius, Erizzo had excellent reasons to imagine that the
strange coin-like objects of salacious subjects were another
manifestation of the Emperor's delight in the figuration of sexual
postures and his commissioning their production.
Having introduced the medals into his discourse about
Tiberius, Erizzo goes on to analyse a few in detail, and comes up
with some surprising readings. For example, he describes one
scene having:
a bed with a curtain in front of it, and above it are two stars. [...] So
that in my judgment, the two stars on this medal indicate that such car-
nal relations took place at night.

Apparently satisfied with this analysis, he goes on to treat an un-

usual aspect of all medals in this group; they each carry on their
reverse a number encircled by a wreath. About this curious fea-
ture Erizzo speculates: "These numbers, as far as one can sur-
mise, indicate the rooms, or cubicles where these libidinous acts
were variously practiced." With this Erizzo completes his fantasy
of the medals as unmediated representations of the debaucheries

29 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. R. GRAVES, Op. cit. (see note 26), p. 131
(Tibenius, 44). For an interpretation of the passage concerning the sexual position that
Suetonius describes see JUDITH P. HALLET, "Morigerari: Suetonius, Tiberius, 44",
L'Antiquite Classique, 47, 1978, pp. 196-200.
30 From Pliny's Natural History, chapter 35: "He also painted a priest of Kybele: a
picture of which the emperor Tiberius was enamored, and which, according to Deculo,
although valued at 6,000,000 sesterces, he placed in his private apartments"
(cubiculum). Trans. K. Jxx-BLAuE, The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of A
Chicago, 1968. See MYEROWITZ, op. cit. (see note 6), p. 137.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

on Capri, with the numbered tokens showing exactly what went

on, and in which location. The theory filtered down to succeeding
antiquarians and then to numismatists, who into our own time
have repeated this idea in the face of mystification about the
origins and purposes of these coin-like objects with scenes of sex-
ual intercourse on the obverse and wreath-encircled numbers on
the reverse.
A few words should be said about these objects, which have
for centuries been as fascinating as they have proved to be elusive
of interpretation. Spintnia is now the name that numismatists use
to refer to individual examples of the erotic medals, a usage
diffused in the mid-seventeenth century by Ezechiel Spanheim.
This scholar dedicated a chapter of his numismatic treatise from
1664, Dissertatio de praestantia et usu numismatum antiquorum, to
the spintniae of Tiberius, in which he ventures a guess that they
served as tickets to bawdy theatrical spectacles, a theory that pre-
serves a reminiscence of Tiberius's debauched viewing pleasures
of the spintrian performers.3" Spanheim does not quote the source
from which he took the term spintria, which has led to the supposi-
tion that he was the first to write about them, despite the fact
that his thorough scholarship was rooted in the study of the Re-
naissance antiquarians. The research of Spanheim, however, most
likely included the writings of Pirro Ligorio, whose numismatic
manuscripts contain the earliest application that I have discovered
of the term spintnia to the medals.
In his Antichit2 romane, Ligorio discusses but does not provide
drawings of the erotic medals, beginning the entry that he has
labelled in the margin "On Spintrie" with the words "It is neces-
sary at least to note, but not illustrate, all of Tiberius's med-
als" since many among them delineate lascivious acts.32 Ligorio's

31 See the comments of SIMONETTA-RIVA, op. cit. (see note 28), pp. 14ff. about
Spanheim, and for an overview of the critical literature from the seventeenth to twen-
tieth centuries. Their very thorough work, however, did not turn up the sixteenth-
century sources that discuss the erotic medals. For remarks on Spanheim's indebtedness
to Italian sources, see also COCHRANE, op. cit. (see note 24), p. 430.
32 Antichita romane, vol. 21, libro 28, 168. This manuscript is in the State Ar-
chives of Turin, Cod. a II.8J.21. I was able to consult the photographic copy in the
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome. For my transcription of the entire passage, see Appendix.
Although Ligorio intended them for publication, these writings remained in manuscript
form, and were most probably written between 1571-83 (oral communication from

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

explanations follow those of Erizzo to the extent that he as

the genesis of the medals to have been illustrations of the
games played by the minions of Tiberius, both female and male.
Ligorio also repeats the connection of erotic texts and illustrations
to Elephantis, naming Suetonius as a source. He cites a derivation
of the term from the verb spintir (to light), and adds the droll
touch of designating the spintriae as tips (in the sense of gratuities)
handed out to the performers. That spintnian conjoinings were
often understood by Renaissance commentators to be sodomitic is
clear in Ligorio's text, since he proceeds to sketch a universal
history of sodomy after he introduces Tiberius's salacious medals.
According to Ligorio's account, the gods and the Greeks were
first in this "art," which ancient Egyptian priests also practiced;
he further attributes the custom to the Italians of the Tyrrhenian
coast, but only when at war, due to the scarcity of women.
Ligorio brings the discussion back round to the Roman Emperors,
citing Suetonius along the way.
Since the earlier text of Sebastiano Erizzo juxtaposes a
detailed discussion of the spintriae as the sexual athletes of
Tiberius with the medals as records of their exploits, it is a pos-
sible source of Ligorio's information. However, it is clear that in
the sixteenth century the erotic medals were as well known among
collectors and connoisseurs as were Suetonius's text and term. The
transferral of the name spintriae from the ancient actions and
actors to the numismatic remains that were believed to portray
them could itself have been common coin among specialists.
With regard to the numerals on the reverse of the spintriae,
varying hypotheses seek to attach the numbers to individual po-
sitions, or have them stipulate location of the various specialties
behind numbered doors, or even assign seating in a particular row
of a theater where the sexual acrobatics took place (for which
sixteen is a very inadequate amount). But since positions and

Howard Burns). A nineteenth-century source quotes Ligorio as attesting to a knowledge

of forty different examples of the spintriae, although I have not been able to locate this
particular statement in his manuscripts. See Notice sur les estampes gravees par Marc-
Antoine Raimondi d'apres les dessins de Jules Romain, traduite et annotee par un bibliophile
(Brussels, 1865), p. 65. This is an edition, amplified with a gloss, of an article by
CRISTOPH GOYrLEB VON MuRR from the Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und allgemeinen Lit-
teratur, 14, 1841.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

numbers appear in different combinations, systematic connecti

would seem to be precluded. Correlations of these sorts are less
satisfactory than one scholar's observation that is simple, logical,
and in large part convincing.33 The numbers that appear on the
reverses of the spintriae range from I to XVI, and on a few very
early examples, the number is accompanied by the letter A. It
happens that in the Roman monetary system sixteen asses were
equivalent to one denarius; thus the spintniae could have been mint-
ed like tokens, with cash value indicated in fractions of denarii,
where each as equaled one-sixteenth of a denanius. This expla-
nation, which indicates that the nature of these medals was close
to coins in function, helps also to clarify the reference in Martial
(Epigrams 8, 78, 9) to a "lasciva nomismata nimbus" as a shower
of medals to a crowd reveling in celebration, eager for the tokens
that could be exchanged for particularly piquant rewards.
This interpretation is compelling in that it provides a reading
of the numbers that can be closely tied to their carrier's function.
There is one loose end, however, that the pragmatic and sensible
solution of the spintriae as tokens with cash value does not tie; it is a
consideration that moves away from the practical and into the realm
of the symbolic and paradigmatic. In his ground-breaking essay
that still provides such a dependable framework for the con-
ceptualization of ancient erotic art, Otto Brendel demonstrates
that seriality is one of the fundamental components of sexual re-
presentation in the later Greco-Roman tradition, in fact "its most
special quality."34 Tied indissolubly to the "stylistic symptom" of
seriality is the resulting concern with numerality, and, indeed, the
aspects of enumeration and cataloguing that have already been
elaborated in this discussion. Brendel links the enumerative
method to other manifestations of Hellenistic culture, and argues
for "a certain mystique of numbers" in connection to the se-
quences of erotic representation. He does not discuss the appearance
of the number sixteen, but I would like to insert it into the
discussion that Brendel began. The limit of the number sixteen

33 F. GNECCHI, "I numeri I-XVI sulle tessere di bronzo" Rivista italiana di numis-
matica, 20, 1907, pp. 515-516. Also see the discussion in SIMONETTA-RIVA, Le tessere,
op. cit. (see note 28), pp. 17-18.
34 BRENDEL, loc. cit. (see note 2), pp. 62ff.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

found on the spintriae was respected and followed by Giulio Ro-

mano in his own serial drawings, and announced by Pietro Are-
tino in his canonic reference to the "sedici modi" in his letter of
justification for the creation of erotica. Somehow these two con-
noisseurs of classical culture from the sixteenth century un-
derstood the number sixteen to be meaningful in association with
ancient erotic series. Moreover, this interpretation is all the more
convincing since another Roman group of erotic representations,
only recently excavated, provides a further example of a sequence
of images of sexual embraces that are enumerated from I to XVI.
The structure classified as the Suburban Baths in Pompeii
contains a space that has been identified as an apodyterium, or
dressing room.35 Its frescoed decoration, dated to the first century
A.D., contains a band of paintings of sexual coupling, whose
scenes are divided into rectangular units, each with a heterosexual
pair, or in two cases, representations of group sex. The multiple
partner events include male homosexual intercourse and, in one,
lesbian cunnilingus. (It is surely not by chance that Scene Seven,
presenting both male and female homosexual activity, a daring
and unusual occurrence in Roman art, is the most difficult to read
because of a surface damaged by later over-painting, indicating
censorship at some point in the existence of the frescoes.)36
Beneath each of the scenes there is an oblong, rectangular
object, on whose front appears a number. Although only eight of
the scenes remain, the sequence of box-like forms below is intact,

35 For the Suburban Baths, with specific focus on the erotic decoration, see the
articles on the excavations by L. JACOBELLI, "Lo scavo delle Terme Suburbane. Notizie
preliminari," Rivista di studi pompeiani, 1, 1987, pp. 151-154; "Terme Suburbane: stato
attuale delle conoscenze," Rivista di studi pompeiani, 2, 1988, pp. 202-208; "Le pitture
e gli stucchi delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei," Kolner Jahrbuch fur Vor- und
Frihgeschichte, 24, 1991, pp. 147-152; "Vicende edilizie ed interventi pittorici nelle
Terme Suburbane a Pompei," Mededelingen van het Nederlands Inst. te Rome, 54, 1995,
pp. 154-165; and now a thorough discussion and complete photographic documentation
in her book, Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei, Rome, 1995. The fres-
coes are mentioned by CLARKE, loc. cit. (see note 3), pp. 286-287. My descriptive infor-
mation is based on a visit to the site, generously arranged by Enrico Pugliese and Enrica
Morlicchio, both of the University of Naples. Tommasina Budetta kindly took the time
to guide me through the monument, providing helpful information.
36 There was a second phase of decoration painted over the erotic scenes that indi-
cates a change of mind or ownership. See JACOBELLI, Le pitture erotiche, op. cit. (see
note 35), pp. 28, 54 and tav. 1.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

and they stop at the end of one of the short walls, having reac
the number XVI.37 The formulation was apparently intentional,
since the cycle covers only part of one of the long walls, com-
mencing in the middle with the first number. Typologically the
scenes, with the notable exceptions mentioned above, are similar
to other erotic representations found in Pompeiian buildings (as
Brendel notes, "with frequent repetitions of typical groupings"),
and are also comparable in being arranged in a sequence around
the walls. The configurations are, in addition, extremely close to
those found on the spintriae. Such evidence indicates a common
prototype (obviously the Pompeiian examples were unknown in
the sixteenth century), arguably the Hellenistic model stemming
from the erotic manuals, some of which seem to have been illus-
trated. This hypothesis is attractive because it allows for a par-
ticular consistency in the format of the paintings. In working out
this idea, Brendel ponders:
How well the monuments here at issue fit into the intellectual
framework of this literature is apparent. Even though they were not
book illustrations, they conform to the need for such illustrations, to be
inserted into the written columns of an ancient book. Their seemingly
contradictory characteristics, the separateness as well as the intrinsic
seriality of their compositional types, are also probably best explained if
we assume that their makers followed the habits of the illuminators.
Their explanatory and typical - not narrative - intent accords with the
spirit of literary catalogues.38

My own reading of the frescoes in the Pompeiian Suburban Baths

finds one more point of evidence for the combination of texts and
illustrations in ancient practice. The curious scene connected to
numeral VIII, the last that remains to us in the sequence, shows a
man with a wreathed head and swollen testicles, who holds open a
volumen, which he presents for the viewer's consideration.39 It is

37 Due presumably to a typographical error, Jacobelli's articles from 1987 and

1988 mistakenly describe the numbers on the front of the rectangles as running from I
to XVII. The error is corrected without comment in the later publications. There is one
transposition of XIV for XVI in JACOBELLI, Le pitture erotiche (63).
38 BRENDEL, loc. cit. (see note 2), p. 65.
39 JACOBELLI, Le pitture erotiche, op. cit. (see note 35), pp. 57-60, suggests that the
figure is a caricature of a poet of erotica, which is thematically similar to but not as

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

possible that the scroll he holds is a sexual manual, and his

disproportionately large genitalia a visual allusion to over indul-
gence. There is another instance in the series (Scene Three) of a
man holding a scroll during his sexual activity; almost certainly
both scenes depict individuals consulting a manual of instruction.
The lost Hellenistic manuals that enumerated a sequence of sexual
positions may well have been the source of the Pompeiian repre-
sentations, which were then alluded to in the images. The paradigm
would have transmitted a canonic numrber of configurations, in
the case of the frescoes in the Suburban Baths, sixteen. Either
because of specific information from other sources and instances,
or in simply following his spintrtian models, Giulio Romano perpet-
uated this convention in his Renaissance recuperation of the
legacy with his sixteen Modi.
If we follow the interpretations that link the spintriae's im-
agery to an erotic tradition established by Hellenistic prototypes
having wide diffusion and many descendants in several different
media in the Roman world, and that suggest their function as tes-
serae purchasable and redeemable in varying amounts of asses, the
question remains: What did they procure? An answer can be
found by once more turning to Suetonius's life of Tiberius, in the
context of a very different discussion. In the midst of narrating
the cruel punishments meted out by the Emperor's tyrannical
sense of justice, Suetonius recounts that Tiberius banned, upon
threat of execution, the defamation of the image of Augustus,
among other instances by "carrying a ring or coin bearing
Augustus's head into a privy or a brothel" (Tiberius 58).
Numismatists have deduced from this passage that since coins
bearing the face of the Emperor could not be used in payment of
services rendered within houses of prostitution, the erotic tesserae
were minted under official auspices to allow patrons to settle their
bill without violating the proscription.40

specific as my interpretation. She further points out ancient attitudes toward illness and
deformity, and identifies the condition of the male figure as being diseased. Cf. Appen-
dix III, "Note sulla diagnosi e l'individuazione dell'idrocele dall'eta antica all'eta
moderna." Further along in her discussion (pp. 68-69), however, Jacobelli does posit a
source in erotic texts for the frescoes, and gives interesting information about instances
of links between texts and images.
40 SIMONETrA-RIVA, Le tessere, op. cit. (see note 28), p. 18ff., argue this thesis

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

This archeological interpretation was not one of the readin

developed in the sixteenth century, but collectors intuited
something of the character of the spintniae, and studied them for
other purposes. As we have seen, Erizzo wanted to scan the tesse-
rae as pages in the book of Tiberius's depravities and Ligorio imag-
ined the spintriae as compensation given by the Emperor to his
sexual prey. Artists would not have been immune to the fasci-
nation of these unusual antiquities, and Giulio Romano certainly
used the spintriae as a major source for his series of erotic motifs.
The coins' components solve another puzzle by giving us an ex-
cellent reason why Giulio Romano closed his series of positions on
the number sixteen, otherwise so unlikely a choice. Aside from
circumstantial evidence, we also have Vasari's word that his
admired colleague was especially learned when it came to the
matter of numismatics:
Giulio, who was a most universal talent, knew how to converse
about everything, but above all about medals. He spent much money
and a lot of time to gain expertise about them.41

Some indication of this is given in the 1528 inventory of the art-

ist's possessions still in his Roman house, which lists two boxes,
one containing thirty medals and the other eleven examples in
lead, with various figurations and heads stamped on them.42
Giulio put both his collection and his erudition to use in his art,
and patterned figures and compositional details after those coins
that sparked his imagination. I suggest that Giulio came to know

most convincingly, and give references to earlier theories and to their tenability or
errors. The amounts in asses represented by the spintriae, which one would pay for
prostitutes of varying class, tally with inscriptions found in Pompeii, where graffiti left
by both customers and providers of services record prices varying from two asses to
sixteen as the highest recorded price. For examples, see F. P. MAULUCCI VIVOLO,
Pompei: i graffiti d'amore, Foggia, 1995, pp. 65, 93, 99. A graffito found in the entrance
to the upper floor of the Suburban Baths provides an additional instance, for it records
"Si quis futuere volet, Atticen quaerat assibus XVI." See JACOBELLI, "Le pitture e gli
stucchi", loc. cit. (see note 35), p. 148, n. 6.
41 "Seppe ragionare Giulio, il quale fu molto universale, d'ogni cosa, ma sopra
tutto delle medaglie, nelle quali spese assai danari e molto tempo per averne cogni-
zione". GIORGIO VASARI, Le vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G.
MILANESI, vol. 5, Florence, 1881, p. 551.
42 C. L. FROMMEL, Der rdmische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, vol. 2, Tiibingen,
1973, p. 220; the inventory is transcribed in Latin, p. 217.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

the erotic tesserae and acquired several for his collection; he then
evolved, principally from their example, a suite of lusty variations
in his "modernly antique" style of drawing.43
A number of spintriae dispersed in museums around the world
at one time formed part of the Gonzaga collection at Mantua. I
believe that they came from Giulio's own holdings, which the art-
ist eventually transported from Rome and then transferred to the
possession of his patron, Federico Gonzaga. A group of seven
spintriae is found in the collection of the Museo Estense at
Modena, where a vast number of medals from the Gonzaga hold-

43 "Anticamente moderno e modernamente antico" is Pietro Aretino's stylish and

precise phrase, written in a letter to Giulio in 1542. It was so memorable that Vasari
appropriated it for his first edition of Giulio's Vita. Vasari liked not only the phrase but
also its surrounding context, as a comparison of the two passages shows: "Tal che se
Apelle e Vitruvio fossero vivi nel cospetto degli artefici, si terrebbono vinti dalla
maniera di lui che fu sempre anticamente moderna e modernamente antica" (Le vite de'
piu eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani, ed. L. BELLOsI-A. Rossi, Turin, 1986,
p. 828). "E cio direbbe anche Apelle e Vitruvio, s'eglino comprendessero gli edifici e le
pitture che avete fatto e ordinato in cotesta citt'a, rimbellita, magnificata da lo spirito
dei vostri concetti anticamente moderni e modernamente antichi" (PIETRO ARETINO,
Lettere sull'arte, vol. 1, ed. E. CAMESASCA, Milano, 1957, p. 215).
I first suggested the spintriae as a source for the modi several years ago, without at
that time having found the corroborating evidence in Erizzo's and Ligorio's texts. See
my essay, "Figure lascive per trastullo de l'ingegno," and entries in the exhibition
catalogue Giulio Romano (Milan, 1989), pp. 277-280; and "L'erotismo di Giulio Ro-
mano, fra decoro, decorazione, e scandalo," La nuova citta, 5, 1994, pp. 104-106. There
are many other instances of Giulio Romano's use of medals, coins, and engraved gems
as basis for his compositions. For an early study of this, see T. YUEN, "Giulio Romano,
Giovanni da Udine and Raphael: Some Influences from the Minor Arts of Antiquity",
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42, 1979, pp. 263-272. KURT W.
FORSTER and R. TUTTLE present a thorough study of the ancient coins used for the fres-
coes in the artist's house in "The Casa Pippi. Giulio Romano's House in Mantua", Ar-
chitectura, 3, 1973, pp. 123-125. E. McGRATH points out that an engraved gem from
the Gonzaga collection was the source for the Jupiter and Olympias in the Camera di
Psiche, in a review of R. SIGNORINI's La fabella di Psiche, in Burlington Magazine, 126,
1984, pp. 505-506. For information on the use of ancient coins in the Raphael circle,
see H. BURNS, "Raffaello e 'quell'antica architectura,' " in Raffaello architetto, op. cit.
(see note 21), pp. 388-390, and ID., " 'QueUe cose antique et moderne belle de Roma':
Giulio Romano, il teatro, l'antico," in Giulio Romano, exh. cat. (op. cit., pp. 227-243).
At the end of the sixteenth century a learned treatise on coins underscores their impor-
tance for the work of contemporary artists: "Trovasi nelle medaglie antiche gran mostra
del perfetto disegno e postura di tutte le figure, le quali si rappresentano tanto al
naturale che non si puo far meglio," which sounds like a description of Giulio's
approach to I modi. From ANTONIO AGUSTIN, Discorsi del S. Don Agostini sopra le me-
daglie et altre anticaglie, Rome, 1592, quoted in R. ZAPPERI, Eros e Controriforma, Turin,
1994, pp. 106-107.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

ings ended up after Mantua was sacked in 1630.44 From Modena

many of the coins were further dispersed, and spintriae that are
countermarked with the Gonzaga eagle are now scattered in vari-
ous collections. The countermark testifies to the original collo-
cation of the coins among the treasures of the Gonzaga; that it
exists on spintriae reinforces the assumption that this specific
antique source was instrumental in Giulio's approach to the cre-
ation of his series of erotic positions.45 The closeness in spirit
between the spintriae and the Modi, and the significant presence
of the erotic medals in the Gonzaga collections, argue persuasively
that the spintriae, and what the Renaissance thought they repre-
sented, were the precise inspiration behind the original drawings.
As a paradigm the spintriae offered the possibility of serial
form, limited by the number sixteen; and the suggestion of an
engraved medium and popular diffusion, linked to the process of
repeatedly impressing the medal with the same stamp. Both of
these aspects are specific to the coins and go beyond the shared
features in other antique objects that might have also influenced I
modi, such as explicit representation of the sexual act and de-
letion of mythological reference. Following Giulio Romano's prac-
tice of variation all'antica on classical motifs, none of the Modi
directly copies the spintriae. However, a few postures are closer to
their prototypes than others, as for example Positions Two (Fig.
1) and Sixteen (Fig. 2) with the medal identified as Scene 9 (Fig.
5).46 Both engravings copy the motif of the kneeling male; one re-
tains the detail of the man clasping his partner's calf, while the
other varies the woman's pose by lifting her leg onto the man's
shoulder.
The reclining female figure seen from the side, resting her

44 See the exhibition catalogue Giulio Romano (op. cit. [see note 43]), p. 280, for
listings of the coins in the Galleria Estense, Modena.
45 In the nineteenth century a confusion was created about the significance of the
countermark, with alternate identifications of it as the Este or Gonzaga eagle, most
likely because so many of the Gonzaga holdings found their way to Modena and were
sold from there after Mantua's sack in 1630. B. SIMONETTA-R. RIVA review the dispute
an-- present clear evidence-for the correctness of the earlier identification of the eagles
with collocation in the Gonzaga Ducal Collections in " 'Aquiletta' Estense o 'aquiletta'
Gonzaga?", Quaderni ticinesi di numismatica e antichita classiche, 1979, pp. 359-373.
46 For the spintriae I will follow the groupings established by SIMONETTA-RIVA, Le
tessere, op. cit. (see note 28); examples of Scene 9 are given on page 41.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Fig. 1. I modi, Position Two, unknown artist, based on Marcantonio

Raimondi's engraving after Giulio Romano.

weight on her right arm, and with her partner clasping one leg
while the other kicks above his shoulder, finds variations also in
Positions Eight and Eleven (Figs. 3 and 4), and echoes the con-
figurations in Scenes 7 and 8 (Fig. 6) of the spintriae.f In ad-
dition, it should be-noted generally that both the medals and the
prints share compositional choices that restrict the visual infor-
mation almost exclusively to the participants in the foreground
and a minimum of decor,- usually a decorated bed, sometimes

47 Ibid., p. 40 for scenes 7 and 8; there is another example of this scene, not men-
tioned by SIMONETTA-RIVA, in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. John Hermann first
brought the Boston spintria to my attention, which initiated my study of this material.
For additional examples of the medals in a large collection not catalogued by Simonetta-
Riva, see J. DONALD BATESON, "Roman spintriae in the Hunter Coin Cabinet," in Er-
manno A. Arslan Studia Dicata, R. MARTINI-N. VISMARA (eds.), Milan, 1991, pp. 385-397.

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 V par 4 gA mbc in coilo . Z cut m Cb4
51 Ficcato qucito ctzo#rta fr4t cc4af
Del ltto n ritrucuo iuru a cfsa.
O che pi?tecr c quigo che mc da,
Ritorn4inm fu'l kctto,cbc mi fai
Crep4r qui fotto,con 14 Ica baf'f
Dolor de figli ,mcrdt quelho p /s 4
Amor creddl,t cbe resstto me bi
Cbc pcnfi tu di fArt quel, cbc ti piace,
DMmin lingua un poco,4nn.ml4 Vu4
Afisi dimanda,cbi ben fcr'e tdac,
t pott d dlquatodi p cer uoria;
S nontra tle4dcul non fit mdi pet;
Spsngccomparcbc't ctq.ofcn- Ut.
Certo mortufa
S PatuanFocepsi r Ioro
D a tesmio bcnx,is c, swo tcforM

Fig. 2. I modi, Position Sixteen, unknown artist, based on Marcantonio

Raimondi's engraving after Giulio Romano.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Fig. 3. I modi, Position Eight, unknown artist, based on Marcantonio

Raimondi's engraving after Giulio Romano.

surrounded by swathes of drapery and fancy cushions. Although

Giulio Romano's compositions are usually a bit more elaborate
than those of the spintriae, given the difference in medium and
dimension the effect of the two groups of images is remarkably
similar.
There is one area, however, in which I modi did not follow the
pattern set by the spintriae. Several of the groupings of the medals
depict a particular configuration that to the sixteenth-century
viewer would unambiguously connote a sexual relation "against
nature." This composition, which shows the man kneeling behind
the woman who crouches or lies prone on the bed, appears with
slight variations in several groupings." The numerous extant ver-

48 That is, on Scenes 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the 15 groupings in SIMONETTA-RIVA, Le

tessere, op. cit. (see note 28), pp. 38-40. There is a similar coupling shown in several of

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

SarLapur uni coglhoiicria

E: fstcndo im potcfla iniafotctcrui dlcfso,
Jaucruz ?1 cazCzo ntclla pott mjiso,
Del cul lono wi fzccndo careJIla;
c inifcin me l4 nmIJ gcncalog.a,
Cb'io uofoutruv dictrofpefisoffefso,
Pergl c diffcrcntc l tondo,c'fefso
Come Cacqutto dd lia mluagia;
Fottima,ef4 di me cio, cbe tu uoi,
Et t pottd Mcul)cbc mc n? curo poco,
Douc,cbc tu ti facciw i fatti tun;
Cb'to per me tic Id pottdxc In cul bo'1 foco
Et quanti catz ban muli4/fni,c buoi,
No,e fccmdrarnoad n184 foid un poco;
Po' frcilat un & tece
AFrM.'i netIdOtdd ufancd antdca;
Cke s'.es Iomofojs'! non eoorit fic;
Fig. 4. I modi, Position Eleven, unknown artist, based on Marcantonio
Raimondi's engraving after Giulio Romano.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

sions of this scene make it likely that it was well known in the
sixteenth century; examples in the British Museum and the
Cabinet des Medailles with the Gonzaga countermark (Fig. 7) im-
ply that Giulio Romano was aware of it. He did not, however,
make any variation on this most condemned position, apparently
observing a self-imposed censorship even in the thick of a
provocative enterprise. Ironically, this is the posture that comes
closest to what Suetonius actually defined as the spintrian act in
the context of multiple partners. While the biography of Tiberius
says that the spintriae performed before the Emperor in groups of
three, the Modi ignore this detail contained in the text; nor do
any of the erotic tesserae that I have seen display more than two
figures.49 A further divergence from Suetonius's account is Giulio
Romano's limitation of his series to heterosexual couples, while
the text mentions male homosexual conjoinings as well. The tes-
serae known to me appear to show only heterosexual couples,
although some have surfaces that are worn or damaged enough to
make the reading unclear. It seems that the artist focussed on the
objects rather than the text as his source.
The options taken up by Giulio Romano from his ancient
sources and his stylish recasting of them quickly became the
model for a genre of erotic representation in prints, which
flourished into the eighteenth century. A memory of the ingredi-
ents lingered in the writings of Filippo Baldinucci, a Bolognese
who gave an account of the career of his compatriot, Marcantonio
Raimondi. Baldinucci formulated much of the relevant passage
from the information in Vasari's narration, but added a few
notable details. He repeats the story that Giulio never gave
Marcantonio any drawings to transform into prints during

the frescoes in Pompeii, attesting to the popularity of the subject and to the possibility
that there was an influence of one on the other, a common prototype, or possibly the
use of a pattern book for such scenes. See SIMONETTA-RIVA, pp. 28 and 43; MAuLucci
VIvoLo, op. cit. (see note 40), reproductions on pages 63, 175, 176, 190, 191. For the
possibility of pattern books for erotic mythological paintings, see FREDRICK, IOc. cit. (see
note 5), P. 176.
49 MARTIAL's Epigram 12, 43, 8, op. cit. (see note 14) talks about a "chain" in
which five individuals are linked, which is a spintrian image. There is a Pompeiian fresco
with a spintrian grouping of three, composed of a heterosexual couple similar to that in
Scenes 7-15 (referred to in the preceding note) with the addition of a male-male joining;
see MAULUCCI VIVOLO, op. cit. (see note 40), p. 118.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

Raphael's lifetime, out of respect for the master. A most laud

comportment, Baldinucci says, but unfortunately contradicted
since the artist then did something disgraceful when he finally did
supply the engraver with subjects:
... the same Giulio not only had several obscene paintings engraved after
the books of Elephantis, mentioned in the Priapea, but also had our
Marcantonio Raimondi engrave in twenty sheets the same number of
the most obscene representations that the fantasy of any immoral per-
son could ever imagine.50

Baldinucci re-forges the chain of Giulio-Elephantis-Modi by way

of Marcantonio's contribution, but with a loose link that indicates
two different groups of printed works. As time went on the com-
ponents of the story were added to or assembled in different
ways, so that eventually the traces of the Modi became palimp-
sests underlying a novel range of references. In his Dialogues upon
the Usefulness of Ancient Medals, Joseph Addison substitutes
Agostino Carracci for Giulio Romano and has him collaborate
with Aretino:
Painters have not a little contributed to bring the study of Medals in
vogue. For not to mention several others, Caraccio is said to have as-
sisted Aretine by designs that he took from the Spintriae of Tiberius.51

Although the so-called Lascivie of Agostino Carracci have been

substituted for I modi, the connection of Aretino and the
"designs" in his book to Tiberius's spintriae remained in force in

50 FILPPo BALDINUCCI, Notizie dei professoni del disegno, vol. 2, ed. F. RANALLI,
Florence, 1846, pp. 49-52.
51 J. ADDISON, Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals, London, 1726; re-
print New York-London, 1976, p. 15. The connection in the eighteenth century
between Aretino and Agostino Carracci is also manifest in a group of engravings by
Jacques Joseph Coiny, published in Paris in 1798 under the title of L'Aretin d'Augustin
Carrache. Mythological names were supplied for the amorous couples, but the basic
format found in I modi was retained with some reminiscences of the original composi-
tions, although much more was newly invented. The series is reproduced in Ars erotica,
vol. 3, ed. L. VON BRUNN, Schwerte, 1983. The association Aretino-Giulio Romano-
Carracci continued into the nineteenth century in England, with a magazine of 1824 ad-
ding a new confusion when it advertised a brothel that had rooms with paintings of
"Aretino's postures after Julio Romano and Ludovico Carracci, interspersed with large
mirrors;" cited in W. KENDRICK, The Secret Museum, New York, 1988, p. 62.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

the 1760s. It is possible that Addison's discourse on medals owes

something to a reading of Erizzo's; one other passage strengthens
the likelihood of the borrowing, or knowledge of an intermediary
source:

To come then to a more weighty use, says Philander, it is certain

that Medals give a very great light to history, in confirming such pas-
sages as are true in old Authors, in settling such as are told after differ-
ent manners, and in recording such as have been omitted. In this case a
cabinet of Medals is a body of history. It was indeed the best way in
the world to perpetuate the memory of great actions, thus to coin out
the life of an Emperor, and to put every great exploit into the mint. It
was a kind of Printing, before the art was invented. [...] For this too is
an advantage Medals have over books, that they tell their story much
quicker, and sum up a whole volume in twenty or thirty reverses. They
are indeed the best epitomes in the world, and let you see with one cast
of an eye the substance of above a hundred pages.52

Erizzo's clever homology of engraved medals and printed pages is

amplified with elegance in this passage, with Addison's memora-
ble formulations of the cabinet of medals constituting a body of
history, "coining the life of the Emperor" and "putting great ex-
ploits into the mint." It is clear that the works of the earlier
Italian antiquarians and men of letters strongly marked the imagi-
nations of writers in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
England, who passed along much information and spirited re-
collections not only of Italian material culture, but of anecdotes
and legends that surrounded and embellished it. The plays of Ben
Jonson in several instances contain catchy references to Aretino,
whose name became a password for obscene art and literature, a
usage developed in part from the circulation of the illustrated edi-
tions of the Sonetti lussuriosi."3 In Volpone Jonson pokes fun at the
very strategy he himself is employing when he has a tiresome

52 ADDISON, op. cit. (see note 51), p. 20.

53 See SAAD EL-GABALAWY, "Aretino's Pornography and English Renaissance Sa-
tire" The Humanities Association Review, 28, 1977, p. 16, where the author asserts that
"there are certain allusions" to Aretino's Sonetti in Volpone and The Alchemist. Jonson
was well-read in Aretino's work, and owned a copy of the Ragionamenti, for which see I.
MOULTON, Before Pornography: Explicitly Erotic Writing in Early Modern England, PhD.
Diss., Columbia University Ann Arbor, 1995, p. 32 and passim, for English attitudes
about the figure of Aretino and his writings.

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Fig. 5. Roman spintria. British Museum, London.
Fig. 6. Roman spintria. Private Collection.
Fig. 7. Roman spintria. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles, Paris.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

know-it-all recite the litany of Italian authors from whom

worth stealing. After citing Pastor Fido, Lady Would-be intone
All our English writers,
I mean such as are happy in th' Italian,
Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly;
Almost as much as from Montaigne:
He has so modern and facile a vein,
Fitting the time, and catching the court-ear.
Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet he,
In days of sonneting, trusted 'em with much.
Dante is hard, and few can understand him.
But for a desperate wit, there's Aretine!
Only, his pictures are a little obscene -54

Among the other jokes in the hilarious characterizations o

continental authors, Aretino's tagline passes over his sonnet
emphasize the images connected to them. Not much later in
play, Aretino's name comes up again. It is pronounced once
in the context of lust, but this time as belonging to the creato
both lascivious verses and engravings, and now with the ad
characterization as mentor of sexual skills with dubious mo
rather like Ovid of the Ars amatoria. As Corvino rationalize
decision to prostitute his wife to gain an inheritance, he think
the (ostensibly) ailing Volpone, confident that there is a dif
ence in such a coupling and one that would take place with
younger and more energetic man:
I grant you: if I thought it were a sin
I would not urge you. Should I offer this
To some young Frenchman, or hot Tuscan blood
That had read Aretine, conned all his prints,
Knew every quirk within lust's labyrinth,
And were professed critic in lechery;
And I would look upon him, and applaud him,
This were a sin; but here, 'tis contrary,
A pious work, mere charity, for physic
And honest policy to assure mine own. (3, 7, 58-66)

54 BEN JONSON, Three Comedies, ed. M. JAMIESON, Harmondsworh, 1985, p

Volpone (3, 4, 88-97). All quotations from Volpone and The Alchemist wil be
from this edition.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Since Jonson touches upon the key points that constitute ho

English thought about Aretino and the Positions or Postures, it
would be strange if somewhere he did not make an allusion to
Elephantis. In fact this falls from the lips of Sir Epicure Mammon
in The Alchemist as he fantasizes about sexual prowess and accou-
trements on a par with legendary figures:
I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed:
Down is too hard; and then, mine oval room
Filled with such pictures as Tiberius took
From Elephantis, and dull Aretine
But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses
Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse
And multiply the figures, as I walk
Naked between my succubae. (2, 2, 41-48)

Tiberius's chamber decorated with the figurae of Elephantis and

naked strolls amidst sexual servants; both of these images strongly
recall Suetonius's Tibenius 43 and 44, while the multiple figures
seen from different angles conjure up the Modi. Jonson's comedies
tease with allusions to the censored Italian obscenities that per-
haps could not be cited more openly; but in a serious drama at
least the historical source is more in evidence. In Act 4 of Sejanus,
which recounts the demise of one of Tiberius's favorites, the
Emperor's unspeakably ignoble behavior at Capri is described as
follows:
Thither, too,
He hath his boyes, and beauteous girls tane up,
Out of our noblest houses, the best form'd
Best nurtur'd, and most modest: what's their good
Serves to provoke his bad. Some are allur'd,
Some threatned; others (by their friends detain'd)
Are ravish'd hence, like captives, and, in sight
Of their most grieved parents, dealt away
Unto his spinties, sellanies, and slaves,
Masters of strange, and new-commented lusts,
For which wise nature hath not left a name.55

55 BEN JONSON, The Collected Works, vol. 4, ed. C. H. HERFORD-P. SIMPSON,

Oxford, 1986, p. 431: Sejanus (4, 391-401).

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

Although nature did not invent such names, historians did,

have seen, in startling passages about Tiberius's sexual perfor
and their arenas. Jonson's litany of "spintries, sellaries, slav
masters of strange lusts casts its own spell with seductive a
tion, a poetic allure drawn from the terminology established in
the writings of Tacitus, and repeated by Suetonius. Tacitus re-
cords the classifications in his Annals:
And now were coined the names, hitherto unknown, of sellarii and
spintriae, one drawn from the obscenity of a place, one from the versati-
lity of the pathic.56

Jonson made frequent allusion to the Annals and was a great ad-
mirer of Tacitus's language and style.57 In searching out the mate-
rial that would provide the historical details for his play, he also
came across the alliterative terms with which to express the in-
iquities of the times, literally embodied in the masters of bizarre
sexual positions; the sellarii named for the furniture on which
they performed, the spintriae for the manner of their coupling.
Much of the historical information in Sejanus, however, also con-
curs with the amplifications found in Suetonius. It is tempting to
think that in his own re-presentation of the material Jonson fur-
ther mixed his classical sources with knowledge of their Italian
progeny. His reference to the "new-commented lusts" is perhaps
a nod in the direction of the modern versions of the lascivious
chambers and intertwined couples designed in sixteenth-century
Italy, and transmitted through printed copies.

From the legendary sex manuals of Hellenistic Greek culture

to Ovid's catalogue of amorous postures, from the erotic tabellae

56 TACITUS, The Annals, trans. J. JACKSON, Cambridge, Mass.-London, 1970,

p. 155: Book 6, 1.
57 See R. MELLOR, Tacitus, New York-London, 1994, p. 150. MELLOR notes that
Shakespeare acted a part in Sejanus - which might have been that of Tiberius - when it
was presented at the Globe Theater. It is intriguing to put together the possibility of
this sort of intimate knowledge of the material regarding Tiberius and his spintriae with
Shakespeare's knowledge of Giulio Romano and Aretino's work. For some ideas about
Shakespeare and Giulio see my article "The Rare Italian Master and the Posture of
Hermione in The Winter's Tale," LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, 3, 1992, pp. 163-
174, with bibliography.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

to the description of Elephantis's paintings instructing Tiberius's

performers at Capri, the Roman world drew on earlier material to
create its own tradition of erotic representation in an intimate in-
terrelationship of image and text. Giulio Romano, Marcantonio
Raimondi, and Pietro Aretino borrowed this model in a highly in-
formed way to produce a new genre of sexual representation that
stunned contemporary society. The impact of I modi in conjunc-
tion with the Sonetti lussuriosi continued into the following
centuries, and among other cultures, particularly the French and
English. The first part of the story fits well within our understand-
ing of the Italian Renaissance as a period of studied effort to
make contact with, to explore, to appropriate, and to rival another
culture's production. The second part could only have come about
after the invention and application of the print medium as the
process not only for diffusing texts and images independently, but
also for combining them into books. The freedom and commercial
astuteness of the early sixteenth-century Venetian press was the
catalyst for the amazingly far-reaching and long lived impact of I
modi, whose further progeny populate the history of early modern
sexual representation.

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 GIULIO ROMANO'S I MODI

APPENDIX

Pirro Ligorio, Antichitd romane. Manuscript housed in the State

Archives, Turin, cod. a. II. 8.J.21, libro XXIIX, page clxiix.

Dele spintrie (appears in left margin)*

E di necessita almeno accennare et non mostrare di tutte le medaglie

di Tiberio il disegno, perche molte se ne trovano con atti lascivi, et con
numero degli atti posti in effetto dali vitij che accrescono con la gran-
dezza del suo principato: et sicome egli non gli dispiaque la lussuria et
sopra delle donne et sopra di garzoni, cosl ancho non gli dispiacque pun-
to di porle publicamente tutti gli atti usati nelli piccioli danari, li quali
dovea dare per giuoco et per mancia alli suoi pacienti, et suoi pesciculi
come egli li chiamava, che ne' bagni gli notavano attorno, et gli faceva
lascivare, per accendersi nel vedere la voglia della libidine, onde le chia-
mo sue spintrie, dal verbo spintir, che vuole dire accendere. Di quest'ar-
te qual fussero i primi furono gli dei et huomini della Grecia, Iove con
Ganimede, Neptuno con Enipto [?], Apolline con Cyparisso et con Ia-
cintho, Hercole con Hyla et altri befli giovanetti: poi anchora dicono gli
Aegyptij sacerdoti sotto colore d'imparare da pueritia le sacre lettere: et
sopra di questo sono tante et varie l'oppenioni che strane cose recitano
di sl brutto et orrido abuso, et dicono, che Orpheo et Thamiro di Thra-
cia, l'uno el settimo et l'altro l'ottavo Poeta avanti Homero, et l'uno et
l'altro clari nella musica. Thamiro hebbe a' suoi piaceri Hymenea fi-
gliuolo di Cassiope et Magnete, et alcuni dicono che di questo vitio fu
auttore ancho Talone di Creti isola, innamorato di Rhadamanto, e men
che honestamente usato. Alcuni altri vogliono che Laio rapisse Chrysip-
po figliuolo di Pelope, a questo affetto, et altri dicono che furono gli ita-
liani Thyrrheni necessitati dalla guerra, per la inopia delle donne, tra lo-
ro essercitandosi. Ma li piu credono che Iove candiano non vi lascio ne
donna bella ne fanciullo, che fusse vistoso che non lo tirasse sotto il suo
abuso. Archita che fuggl in Syracosa, citta di Sicilia, per volere fare il
furto di un giovane fu cacciato da la patria. Hercole chiamando il suo
Hyla fu piantato dagli Argonauti. Hipparino di Heraclea di Italia sendo
amato da Anteleone, et l'un l'altro furono cagione della morte del Re di

* I would like to thank Gino Corti for his help in correcting my transcription.

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 BETTE TALVACCHIA

Heraclea come havano detto nelle cose degli Heracleoti, secondo scrive
Parthenio negli Herasti? Siche di questo abuso contra natura fu rovinata
Sodoma et Gomorra dalla giustitia del celeste signore: ma Tiberio, vio-
lando et [ ...] giovanetti in Roma, in Antio, in Terrracina in uno Antro
et nel'Isola di Capri distrusse l'honore et la vita, et non si astenne ne
delle parenti ne delli tibicini de' sacrificij pesentantiamente isfogo la sua
perfidia della libidine: Piacevagli grandemente con questi et colle donne
osservare gli atti dipinti in un libro che gli fu donato, opera di Elephan-
tide, (come piace a Suetonio) et di tutte queste cose pose col numero
delli disegni posti ad effetto nelle medaglie. Et di questo variare vogio-
no che Astionassa, che fu una delle compagne e ministre d'Helena, che
le ritrovasse tra le donne, la qual sempre la segul, et quando Helena fu
la prima volta rapita da Theseo, e la seconda da Paride, in Aegypto, et
per tutto dove quella fu, perche si dilettava Helena delle inventioni di
costei nell'essercitij et giuochi di Venere, e vogliono che costei facessi
prima i libri di questa materia, onde poi fece il medesima Elephante, et
Philene sfacciatissime femine, che lasciarono i commentari diligentissi-
mamente scritti et dipinti. Onde sendo cose vituperevoli l'havemo depo-
sti indietro, abbastando di havere detto che questo anchora havemo ve-
duto nelle antichita tratto nelli costumi di Tiberio et a 'sua gloria' et re-
verenza sia raccontato d'alcuni de' quali egli hebbe lo essempio, lo quale
seguito poi Nerone, nato nella fameglia Domitia et adottato nella Clau-
dia accio che nell'imperio vi venisse un altro mostro di natura crudele et
lussurioso, castrando i giovani per prenderli al suo uso come ancho fece
di Sporo, che lo sposo per moglie, et con seco cavalcava per la citta sfac-
ciatamente; et sl come tristamente costui visse et morl, cosl ancho i suoi
vitij furono imitati da Marco Aurelio Helagabalo imperadore, che non
lascio caldarozzi da acconciare, et sendo andate tanto oltre le sue abusio-
ni, che fece il fine secondo il merito di loro costumi, fu ucciso gittato
nelle doccie delle cloache et gittato a fiume, onde ne fu appellato Tiberi-
no Trattitio, et non li valse pentimento di havere suaso alle donne di
scacciare la vergogna et usare la Palestra clinopale di Venere commune-
mente senza alcun rispetto.

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