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Il Perdono di Gesualdo: Art, Sin, and Salvation

by William Chaudoin

Carlo Gesualdo, Conte da Venosa (c. 1566-1614)—composer, murderer, and patron of the arts—commissioned the Florentine painter Giovanni Balducci to create the altarpiece, Il Perdono di Gesualdo (fig. 1), in an attempt to alter his own fate. Gesualdo’s plan of intricate, multidimensional patronage is central to his desire to exercise control over what became of his soul. Employing music, painting, and architecture, Gesualdo sought to enhance his relationship with his uncle, Saint Carlo Borromeo.

Featured prominently in the altarpiece, Borromeo’s views on sacred art and music shaped Gesualdo’s patronage initiatives, especially in the latter half of Gesualdo’s life when he fell ill. Through strategic artistic choices, Gesualdo manifests a profound plea for redemption deeply connected to Borromeo, evidenced by his collection of Borromean relics, church-building efforts in the town of Gesualdo, and the inclusion of his uncle in the altarpiece's narrative. Therefore, we can view Gesualdo's efforts as an attempt to assert dominion over his fate wherein he grapples with a profound question: can one buy their way into salvation through acts of artistic devotion?

In seeking redemption, Gesualdo confronted the specter of his past sins: an overwhelming fear of what awaited him in the afterlife motivated and complicated his artistic and spiritual pursuits. Scholars Cecil Gray, Catherine Deutsch, and Glenn Watkins have debated Gesualdo’s motivations surrounding the altarpiece, while examining the contribution of his patronage and musical compositions to his social status.¹ Carlo Gesualdo was a Neapolitan aristocrat with ancestral ties to the town of Gesualdo, where his family had been in power since the tenth century.² He is infamous for the murder of his first wife, Maria d’Avalos, and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, in 1590—an event that would plague his conscience. Reports of the murders emphasize Gesualdo’s frenzied actions, while other apocryphal accounts detail extreme gore and brutality.³ Four years later, Gesualdo married Eleonora d’Este, which exposed him to the innovative music of the Ferrara court, a  city that had long been a hub of progressive musical activity.⁴ Here, Gesualdo published his first two books of madrigals in 1594, which showcased complex chromatic harmonies reflective of his inner turmoil.⁵ This transition, however, did not absolve his guilt; the weight of his past sins fueled his later acts of patronage, including the construction of two churches in Gesualdo—Santissimo Rosario (fig. 2) and Santa Maria delle Grazie (fig. 3)—the commissioning of Il Perdono di Gesualdo, and an accompanying collection of sacred music.

Early religious and familial connections informed Gesualdo’s patronage initiatives during the latter part of his life as he grappled with his impending mortality and fears of eternal torment. Born in 1566, Gesualdo was influenced by the Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent, which shaped the practices of sacred imagery and veneration.⁶ Carlo Borromeo, his uncle and a central figure in this movement, guided Gesualdo’s ecclesiastical aspirations. Gesualdo’s subsequent artistic patronage manifested as an attempt to exert control over his destiny, driven by both his guilt over the murder of his wife and his growing religious zeal. As his health deteriorated and his mortality became increasingly imminent, he turned to religion not only to confront his past actions but also to amend his legacy. His patronage served as a means to realign his fate with the protective power of his uncle, Carlo Borromeo, whether earthly, heavenly, or imagined; the altarpiece Il Perdono di Gesualdo at Santa Maria delle Grazie would symbolize his effort to extend that influence over the fate of his soul.

This effort to secure his salvation is embodied in the altarpiece Il Perdono di Gesualdo, which was commissioned by the prince himself and painted by Giovanni Balducci. Installed in the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Gesualdo, this work serves as a focal point for both his personal devotion and his legacy. Il Perdono di Gesualdo is structured into three distinct realms: a celestial realm featuring divine figures such as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Archangel Michael, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Catherine of Siena; an earthly realm that includes representations of Saint Carlo Borromeo, Carlo Gesualdo, and Eleonora d’Este; and a fiery realm depicting winged figures rising above the waiting souls.⁷ While representations of hell were not uncommon in Post-Tridentine art, the choice to place the figures in purgatory reflects the era’s growing emphasis on intercession and the belief in the transformative power of divine mercy.

In the altarpiece, Borromeo stands beside Gesualdo, his hand firmly resting on Gesualdo’s shoulder. Gesualdo, on bent knee and with clasped hands, gazes upwards toward the heavenly realm with a penitent expression, while Borromeo gestures toward him, interceding on his behalf (fig. 4). The shared focus of both figures, their eyes directed toward Christ, suggests a united plea for Gesualdo’s acceptance into Heaven, which frames the work as a manifestation of Gesualdo’s desire for redemption amidst the weight of his past sins, namely murder and adultery. The juxtaposition of Gesualdo’s penitent stance and Borromeo’s protective gesture visually contrasts the human act of seeking redemption with the divine intercession that promises salvation. This pairing invites reflection on whether salvation can be achieved through artistic devotion—symbolized by Gesualdo’s commission of the altarpiece—or if true redemption requires the authenticity of one’s remorse. It is worth noting that Gesualdo intended for his musical composition, Tenebrae Responsoria (1611), to be performed in front of the altarpiece, further enhancing the depth of his plea.⁸

Carlo Borromeo’s life and work are crucial for understanding Gesualdo’s motivation for featuring his uncle as an intercessor in the altarpiece (fig. 4). Born in 1538 into the influential Borromeo family of Lombardy, which included Pope Pius IV, Borromeo became the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan in 1564, a position of great ecclesiastical power.⁹ Despite his family’s opulence, Borromeo chose a life of piety, undertaking barefoot pilgrimages across Italy to emphasize his devotion to God, opening his residence in Rome to pilgrims, and washing the feet of the destitute.¹⁰ Carlo Borromeo was beatified in 1602 by Pope Clement VIII and later canonized as a saint in 1610 by Pope Paul V. Il Perdono, at the time of its completion in 1609, features a rare instance of a non-divine figure acting as an intercessor with the divine. Gesualdo would have been aware of Borromeo’s canonization before his own death in 1611. Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae (Borromean Regulations) provided guidelines for aligning the physical spaces of churches with the spiritual objectives of Catholicism.¹¹ In his treatise, Borromeo emphasizes the importance of using art as a means of educating and inspiring devotion among the faithful. Gesualdo’s commission of Il Perdono adheres to Borromeo’s principles, reflecting a conscious effort by Borromeo to employ art within sacred spaces for both aesthetic and spiritual instruction.

In the later stages of his life, faced with illness, Gesualdo turned to Borromeo’s teachings, demonstrating his piety through acts of artistic patronage. This veneration is evident not only in Gesualdo’s desire to collect his uncle’s relics after his death but also in the prominent role Borromeo plays in Il Perdono. In correspondence with his cousin, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Gesualdo requested a portrait of Carlo Borromeo and any relics that might alleviate his ailments. He received a portrait in 1611 and a sandal in 1612, along with additional relics. In a letter dated August 1, 1612, Gesualdo expressed his gratitude, stating:

I could not have expected or received a more precious or desired favor today from the kindness of Your Illustrious Lordship than what you graciously granted me with the sandal that the glorious San Carlo wore pontifically. I greeted and kissed it with great joy and consolation, but it will be preserved and held with due respect and devotion.¹²

This exchange underscores Gesualdo’s profound reverence for Borromeo and his commitment to seeking solace through relics associated with his uncle’s sanctity. Catherine Deutsch attributes Gesualdo’s fervor in obtaining these relics to his intention to erect a chapel for Borromeo at Santa Maria delle Grazie in the town of Gesualdo. In this devotional context, Gesualdo’s commission of the altarpiece emerges as a crucial element in his overarching plan for salvation, as he sought to honor his uncle while also seeking expiation for his own soul.

Gesualdo’s commission of Il Perdono reflected the influence of Carlo Borromeo’s Instructiones, which emphasized strict guidelines for creating sacred images that align with ecclesiastical practices and historical accuracy. Borromeo insisted that sacred art must avoid false or obscene representations, stressing the need to inspire piety:

... nothing false, uncertain or apocryphal should be represented, nothing superstitious, unusual, so too will be strictly avoided all that is profane, shameful or obscene, dishonest or lewd; and likewise all that is extravagant, that does not inspire men to piety, or that could offend the soul and the eyes of the faithful.¹³

Gesualdo’s Il Perdono served as both a personal expression of piety and a means of cultivating devotion among the faithful while adhering to Borromean principles. The altarpiece underscores the religious and instructive value of sacred images, reinforcing that such artworks should inspire reverence rather than merely serve aesthetic purposes. As Maurizio Vitta notes, Borromeo prioritized the religious significance of images over their formal qualities, insisting they avoid errors that could be exploited by Reformers.¹⁴

Most scholars have interpreted the altarpiece Il Perdono as an emotive and didactic tool reflecting Gesualdo’s desire for expiation.¹⁵ However, this view is not universally accepted. Annibale Cogliano, from the Carlo Gesualdo Study and Documentation Center, argues that Gesualdo’s motivations for commissioning the altarpiece and establishing two churches were less about atonement and more about family legacy and status. He asserts that the connection between the altarpiece, the churches, and Gesualdo’s past crimes is tenuous, suggesting that his acts of patronage stemmed from a desire for grandeur rather than a genuine quest for forgiveness.¹⁶ Cogliano posits that the interpretation of Il Perdono as a “canvas of forgiveness” emerged from a 19th-century rediscovery of Gesualdo, fueled by literary and religious figures captivated by his history of murder and innovative music. These individuals infused a contemporary romanticism into Gesualdo’s narrative, creating a redemptive lens through which to view the altarpiece. The religious atmosphere in southern Italy in Gesualdo’s time was deeply ingrained in everyday life, suggesting a “contractual aspect” to a sinner’s relationship with divinity, which diminishes the significance of Gesualdo’s altarpiece as a tool for expiation.¹⁷

In contrast, musicologist Glenn Watkins highlights the significance of the saints depicted in the altarpiece, all of whom faced and overcame demons, suggesting that Gesualdo’s intent was to surround himself with intercessors. Watkins presents a psychological profile of Gesualdo, linking his quest for redemption to the lyrics of his motets. He argues that, as Gesualdo reflected on his life, he recognized the insufficiency of time to enhance his legacy or erase past sins.¹⁸ Consequently, Gesualdo sought divine pardon through the commissioning of the altarpiece and by releasing his most mature musical works—Sacrae Cantiones I and II (1603) and Tenebrae Responsoria (1611)—previously kept private. Watkins views this decision as integral to Gesualdo’s pursuit of absolution in his final years.

Both Cogliano and Watkins focus narrowly on the altarpiece and only one other aspect of Gesualdo’s patronage. Cogliano examines patronage trends in early modern southern Italy, while Watkins emphasizes Gesualdo’s sacred music. This limited scope overlooks the interplay between Il Perdono, Gesualdo’s music, and architecture, particularly in relation to his complex relationship with Borromeo. Exploring these interconnected elements reveals richer dimensions in Gesualdo’s pursuit of redemption and illuminates the intricate links between his artistic endeavors and acts of patronage. Gesualdo’s altarpiece embodies the convergence of themes from Borromeo’s Instructiones, his own musical compositions, and fears of damnation, thereby encapsulating the complexity of his spiritual journey. Just as Borromeo’s Instructiones advocated for active participation in liturgical worship, Gesualdo’s altarpiece stands as a tangible manifestation of his quest for reconciliation and redemption. Additionally, Gesualdo composed and published a collection of sacred music intended for performance before the altarpiece.

Commissioned by Gesualdo himself, the altarpiece invites viewers into a contemplative space where themes of sin, repentance, and salvation converge, echoing the spiritual depth found in Gesualdo’s music and the teachings of Borromeo. Contrary to Cogliano’s assertion that Gesualdo commissioned the altarpiece and churches merely to enhance his family name, his various commissions and musical works collectively reinforced his plea for redemption.¹⁹ By integrating a program of sacred music in front of Il Perdono in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Gesualdo orchestrated a harmonious alignment of his artistic endeavors, enhancing the resonance and emotional impact of his plea. The interconnectedness of Gesualdo’s artistic endeavors illuminates the fervency of his quest for redemption. Each distinct work—musical compositions, architectural projects, and visual art commissions—contribute to the multifaceted nature of his supplication. Gesualdo’s endeavors represent a type of expiative plea, highlighting the ambiguous question of whether one can attain salvation through artistic devotion, while leaving us to ponder the sincerity of his quest for forgiveness—an answer that may remain forever elusive.

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William Chaudoin holds a BA in Italian from Vassar College and an MA in Art History from the George Washington University, where his research focused on the early modern period in southern Italy. His scholarship explores the ways in which art and architecture served as mediums of devotion and social influence.

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1. Cecil Gray and Peter Warlock, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer (Greenwood Press, 1971); Glenn Watkins, The Gesualdo Hex: Music, Myth, and Memory (W.W. Norton, 2010); Catherine Deutsch, Carlo Gesualdo (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, 2010).

2. Watkins, Gesualdo Hex, 14.

3. The Gran Corte della Vicaria found Gesualdo innocent of a crime, with the report of the crime cataloged in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli. In The Gesualdo Hex: Music, Myth, and Memory (2010), Glenn Watkins examines how the cultural narrative surrounding the murder and Gesualdo’s reputation has cast doubt on the veracity of certain details, particularly the alleged trap set to catch his wife with her lover and the brutal nature of the murder itself.

4. Deutsch, Carlo Gesualdo, 64.  

5. Watkins, Gesualdo Hex, 20.

6. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) significantly reshaped Catholic practices and the production of devotional imagery by emphasizing the role of sacred images in educating the faithful and reinforcing doctrinal orthodoxy. As G. T. Harper notes in Carlo Borromeo’s Itineraries: The Sacred Image in Post-Tridentine Italy (2018), the Council’s directives led to a more controlled and didactic approach to art, ensuring that religious images were clear, accessible, and aligned with the reforms of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

7. Glenn Watkins interprets this depiction as representing purgatory, though the flames and the opening in the scene bear a striking resemblance to the imagery of Hell, particularly the traditional iconography of the mouth of Hell. Regardless of the specific realm depicted, this vision represents a fate that Gesualdo sought to avoid, reflecting his deep fear of divine retribution.

8. Watkins, Gesualdo Hex, 62.

9. Pope Pius IV (1499–1565), born Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici, was the uncle of Carlo Borromeo and played a pivotal role in the Catholic Reformation. His papacy was marked by the continuation of the Council of Trent, which was instrumental in shaping Catholic doctrine and liturgy in response to Protestant challenges. Pius IV’s influence and support were crucial in advancing the career of his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, within the church.

10. Anne H. Muraoka, The Path of Humility: Caravaggio and Carlo Borromeo (Peter Lang, 2015), 54.

11. Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae Et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae was first published in 1577 and stands as the only Tridentine treatise that deals with architecture. For more on its significance, see Robert Sénécal, “Carlo Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae Et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae and Its Origins in the Rome of His Time,” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000): 241-67.

12. Deutsch, Carlo Gesualdo, 129. Translated from French by the author. Original French: “Je ne pouvais attendre ni recevoir aujourd’hui de la bonté Votre Seigneurie Illustrissime une grâce plus précieuse, ni plus désirée que celle que vous avez daigné me faire avec la Sandale que le glorieux saint Charles utilisait pontificalement. Je l’ai accueillie et embrassée avec une grande allégresse et consolation, mais elle sera conservée et tenue avec la vénération et la dévotion qu’il convient.”

13. Charles Borromeo, Stefano Della Torre, and Massimo Marinelli, Instructionum fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae: libri II Caroli Borromei (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), 71. Translated from Italian by the author. Original Italian: “Inoltre, nel dipingere o scolpire sacre immagini, come non si dovrà rappresentare nulla di falso, di incerto o apocrifo, di superstizioso, di insolito, così si eviterà rigorosamente tutto ciò che sia profano, turpe o osceno, disonesto o procace; e analogamente si eviterà tutto ciò che sia stravagante, che non stimoli gli uomini alla pietà, o che possa offendere l’animo e gli occhi dei fedeli.”

14. Maurizio Vitta, "La Questione delle Immagini nelle Instructiones di San Carlo Borromeo," in Instructionum fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae: libri II Caroli Borromei, eds. Charles Borromeo, Stefano Della Torre, and Massimo Marinelli (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), 390. Translated from Italian by the author. Original Italian: “Ciò che dunque sta a cuore al Borromeo—come lo era stato ai Padri conciliari—non era il carattere formale delle immagini, ma il loro valore religioso. Data per scontata la natura eminentemente informativa e didattica di esse, era necessario accertarsi che nulla nella loro configurazione potesse aprire un varco all’errore o prestare il fianco agli attacchi dei Riformati. Solo in questo senso vanno intese le minuziose indicazioni circa le figure da accettare o da rifiutare, gli attributi dei santi o il decoro degli atteggiamenti, delle vesti e degli ornamenti.”

15. Many scholars, including Alfredo Bosi, Cecil Gray, Catherine Deutsch, and Antonio Rattalino, have interpreted Il Perdono di Gesualdo as an emotive and didactic tool reflecting Gesualdo’s desire for expiation and redemption through artistic patronage. This view aligns with the broader understanding of the altarpiece as a visual manifestation of Gesualdo’s complex psychological state and religious zeal. However, not all interpretations agree with this view, with some scholars offering alternative readings of the work’s significance and its role in Gesualdo’s patronage within the context of Post-Tridentine religious reform.

16. Annibale Cogliano, “La pala del perdono: topos della seconda metà del XIX secolo,” Centro Studi e Documentazioni Carlo Gesualdo. http://carlogesualdo.altervista.org/pagine/pala_perdono.htm.

17. Cogliano, “La pala del perdono: topos della seconda metà del XIX secolo.”

18. Watkins, Gesualdo Hex, 89-90.

19. Cogliano, “La pala del perdono: topos della seconda metà del XIX secolo.”

Chicana/o/x Spiritual Memories: Layering in the Digital Print Work of Amalia Mesa-Bains

by Gilda Posada

Amalia Mesa-Bains was one of the first Chicana artists to work with digital print. I interpret Mesa-Bains’s printmaking process as a contemporary Chicana/o/x amoxtli, or manuscript. Reading Mesa-Bain’s printworks as an amoxtli that holds sacred memory and knowledge speaks to how Chicana/o/x artists like Mesa-Bains are rebuilding and rewriting the sacred books of knowledge that were burned by the Spanish conquistadores when they arrived in Mexico in 1519. Mesa-Bains’s printworks serve as a pathway for Chicana/o/x Indigeneity to exist in the past, present, and future, but more importantly, they demonstrate how Indigenous-matriarchal ancestral knowledge could be used to heal contemporary Chicana/o/x experiences in a neo-colonial society.

Before European contact with the Americas, the Mexica and surrounding Indigenous peoples in the Central Mexican Valley used pictorial manuscripts, called amoxtli, to document their understandings of the world and themselves. These amoxtli recorded information regarding Mexica ontology, cosmology, and epistemology, relating information on their creation story, history, science, homeland, government, census, tribute, and sacred ceremonies and rituals.¹ When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they quickly learned that amoxtli and the sacred information within were housed in Mexica temples and government buildings. Thus, as part of their conquest, the Spanish burned or destroyed many of these manuscripts. Those that survived the early conquest were later burned by priests or Catholic church officials who saw the information in the codices as evil and in conflict with their conversion aims for the Indigenous peoples. Today, only fifteen known pre-conquest manuscripts survive. However, some early colonial Spanish friars and priests attempted to preserve the aspects of Mexica life captured in burned amoxtli by transcribing oral histories and tasking Mexica scribes with illustrating these manuscripts.² Over five hundred of these early colonial manuscripts survive, the most famous of which is Bernardino de Sahagún’s work with the Florentine Codex (1577). This essay concerns a lesser-known early colonial codex, the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano (1552), also known by its colonial names, Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis Badianus or the Badianus Manuscript: An Aztec Herbal.³

Amalia Mesa-Bains’ work, Badianus Botanicals: Bracero, is from her series Badianus Botanicals, which takes its name from the 1552 Codex. Badianus Botanicals: Bracero is a reclamation and remembrance of the Indigenous medicinal ancestral knowledge found in the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano. By layering imagery of remedies from the codex with contemporary imagery of braceros and the Southwestern United States landscape in her print work, Mesa-Bains offers a map that invites Chicana/o/x peoples to find the fragmented pieces of their body, mind, and spirit that they have lost or forgotten due to colonial violence. Amalia Mesa-Bains states:

To understand the artwork that is inspired by sacred sources it is important to establish the concept of memory. The relationship of memory to history is the connection between the past and the present, the old and the new. For the Chicana/o community there is no absence of memory, rather a memory of absence constructed from the losses endured in the destructive experience of colonialism and its aftermath. This redemptive memory heals the wounds of the past. Memory can be seen as a political strategy in work that reclaims history for the community. In a sense the art making inspired by the remembrances of the dead, the acts of healing and the reflections of the sacred can be seen as a politicizing spirituality.¹⁰

Badianus Botanicals: Bracero is a visual politicization of Chicana/o/x Indigenous-spirituality (fig. 1). The central figures in the print are three braceros, who are pictured in black and white. Braceros were Mexican exchange workers who came to the United States as part of the Bracero Program, which was in place from 1942 to 1964. The program contracted 4.5 million Mexicans to take temporary agricultural work in the United States. The Bracero Program had an important effect on the business of farming in the United States, yet braceros faced a significant amount of abuse and exploitation while participating in the program.¹¹ This mistreatment of the Bracero Program laid the foundation for the Chicana/o/x agricultural worker exploitation that took place in the 1960s across the Coachella Valley and Central Valley of California, which would ultimately lead to the creation of the United Farm Workers Union in 1966.¹² By centering braceros in her work, Mesa-Bains is recalling the laws, histories, and colonial violence that have been imposed onto the brown Indigenous body. The mostly forgotten Bracero Program was rooted in the commodification and dehumanization of the Indigenous body, whose worth was only measured in terms of its labor.

The invisibility of women in this print is intentional, as many of the braceros’s families were left in Mexico. Today, similar socio-economic hardships and immigration policies continue to be the reasons behind family separation and for the militarization of the United States-Mexico border. Neo-colonial policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, drug violence, armed conflict, and corrupt governments in Latin America backed by the United States continue to force the migration of Indigenous peoples from Mexico and Central America toward the United States. Violence, dehumanization, and oppression of the Indigenous body might be more visible when it comes to working conditions, but family separation and continued forced migration practices that cause people to be removed from their ancestral homelands are also forms of continued colonial violence. Indigenous women are often the ones left to carry the consequences, especially when the majority of their husbands migrate to the United States as a means of survival in order to send money back home to their wives and children. In Mesa-Bains’s print, the image of the braceros is in black and white, signaling a collapsing of time between the past and present day, where family separation persists due to neo-colonialism continuing to force migration of Indigenous peoples. The braceros become a marker of time, a proof of existence in this print. The past and present come together to make them the main characters of the story that Mesa-Bains is telling, and there is no erasure of their existence or their humanity in this contemporary amoxtli.

Amalia Mesa-Bains offers a remedy to the pain that her community continues to endure by remembering her Indigenous-ancestral healing practices in the form of images from the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano. Specifically, she references images from Plate 22 , which depicts three different medicines, each of which are laid over a different bracero (fig. 2). They are macayelli, xoxouhquipahtli seeds, and tlaquilin leaves, which, when combined, provide medicine for ear pain. This information is written in Latin under the drawing of the herbs on Plate 22, with detailed instructions for their preparation and use.¹³

In her print, Amalia Mesa-Bains keeps the Latin portion of the original manuscript but relocates the text to the top of the print. Additionally, she changes the color of the ink in which it is written. Instead of the original brown ink, Mesa-Bains uses a transparent white ink that fades into the background of the print. This white color directly connects to the bracero figures. When seen together, the two become one, implying that Mesa-Bains is creating a link between two different moments in time. There are several ways to interpret their unity. The first is that Mesa-Bains is offering medicine to the braceros who are in pain, the second is that she is offering them healing for their exploitation and dehumanization at the hands of colonial powers. A third interpretation is that she is offering medicine to American citizens who have fallen deaf to the cries of these neo-colonial victims, medicine for them to open their ears and bear witness—if not act—to the cries of those who are in pain due to their exploited labor in both the past and present.

The use of Latin points to the ongoing violent histories of European colonialism in Mesoamerica. Mesa-Bains visualizes the blood and destruction that the Catholic church has on their hands by deploying the language used to justify violence and forced assimilation for Chicana/o/x peoples. Elsewhere, she uses Nahuatl in her print to honor the Indigenous medicine and her ancestral connection to Indigenous knowledge. The tension of being caught between worlds can be seen in the text overlayed on the remedy instructions. In red font Mesa-Bains writes, “In the condition of displacement we experience our own landscape of longing. They are the sites of memory and spirituality that sustain us in times of extremity and loss.” She is acknowledging the losses caused by displacement and the transformation of Indigenous peoples into proletarianized subjects on the settler-colonial stage. At the same time, she points to the resilience and endurance of Indigenous peoples despite colonial destruction. Mesa-Bains is calling ancestral memory and spirits who have walked on this land to be the primary tool for Chicana/o/x peoples to survive. However, it is that same spirit that needs the medicine to heal and continue to endure.

The remedy that Mesa-Bains chose for this print is one which is vital to cure as soon as the illness begins because it can cause susto or loss of tonalli.¹⁴ According to Mexica belief, tonalli, or life-force, lives in the head.¹⁵ An individual can slowly lose their tonalli and eventually perish through susto, or spiritual fright, that enters the body through their mouth, ears, or eyes.¹⁶ The remedy that Mesa-Bains brings forward is categorized as a cure for remedying the tonalli due to a sickness in the ears, one that must be applied quickly. Mesa-Bains is directing the viewer’s attention to the sense of hearing and listening especially as it relates to susto and the “memory of absence.”¹⁷ By visually layering painful Chicana/o/x histories, imagery of colonialism, and the physical exploitation of Chicana/o/x peoples, Mesa-Bains is reminding the viewer that the memory of colonialism is not lost, but rather that to change the condition of the present and future, one must heal the trauma or susto that has been inflicted onto the Indigenous body throughout centuries of violence. She is providing relief to the ears and restoration of spirit or tonalli for those that live with pain due to the physical, mental, and spiritual exploitation they face. However, it is important to note that the remedy selected by Mesa-Bains is one that requires daily treatment and calls for all aspects of a plant's life cycle to be used: seeds, leaves, bushes, and roots. It also requires that the plants be taken through various transformations before they can be used as a cure, such as cutting, boiling, grinding, and rubbing. With this, Mesa-Bains is signaling that healing and restoring the tonalli will not be easy and that it will be a long and hard process. She is pointing to the importance of listening to past experiences so that future Chicanas/os/xs will not forget and instead learn from the experiences, memories, and spirits of their ancestors.

In Badianus Botanicals: Bracero, the landscape also reveals one last important layer to the Chicana/o/x experience: that of mother earth, who gave birth to Chicana/o/x-Indigenous ancestors. The landscape in this print is from a United States-Mexico border crossing desert region, identifiable by the topography and flora depicted in the background. The cacti are reminiscent of the creation story of the Mexica, who spent hundreds of years on a journey across the United States Southwest and Northern Mexico desert regions being guided by Huitzilopochtli to the place where they would establish their homelands.¹⁸ By including the Southwest desert, Mesa-Bains is not only reminding Chicanas/os/xs of their Indigenous ancestry tied to a place and time, but also the contemporary pains caused by the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their homelands across the global South. Badianus Botanicals: Bracero is an amoxtli and pictorial reminder that the relationship between humans and land is the medicine that will keep the Chicana/o/x spirit and peoples moving forward despite the hardships that they continue to face.

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Gilda Posada is a Xicana art historian, artist, and curator from Southeast Los Angeles. She received her AB from UC Davis and her MFA and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Currently, Gilda is a PhD candidate in History of Art at Cornell University.

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1. Elizabeth H. Boone, "Central Mexican Pictorials,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, ed. Davíd Carrasco (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 155-158.

2. María Elena Briseno, “Códices: Los antiguos libros del nuevo mundo,” in Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 24, no. 81 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 2002): 175-178. http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-12762002000200008&lng=es&nrm=iso.

3. The Codex de la Cruz-Badiano is known by several names such as: Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis Badianus, Badianus Manuscript, and Codex Barberini.

4. “The Badianus Manuscript,” World Research Foundation. http://www.wrf.org/ancient-medicine/badianus-manuscript-americas-earliest-medical-book.php.

5. EC Del Pozo, “Prefacio,” in Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, by Martín De la Cruz, trans. Juan Badiano (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, 1964).

6. Andrés Aranda et a,. “La materia medica en el Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis,” Revista de la Facultad de Medicina 46, no. 1 (2003): 13. https://www.medigraphic.com/pdfs/facmed/un-2003/un031d.pdf.

7. The sequence of the remedies starts with the head and ends at the feet, signaling some correspondence to the thirteen upper worlds, and seven underworlds that the Mexica believed ruled all forces and beings.

8. Carlos Viesca T. and Andrés Aranda, “Las Alteraciones del Sueño en el Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 26 (December 27, 1996): 156.

9. Carlos Jair García-Guerrero and Feliciano Blanco-Dávila, “La cirugía plástica y el Códice De La Cruz-Badiano,” Revista Medicina Universitaria 6, no. 22 (2004): 52.

10. Amalia Mesa-Bains, "Spiritual Visions in Contemporary Art," in Imagenes E Historia/Images and Histories: Chicana Altar-Inspired Art, eds. Constance Cortez and Amalia Mesa-Bains (Medford, MA: Tufts University, 2000), 2.

11. "Opportunity or Exploitation: The Bracero Program,” The National Museum of American History. http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_51_5.html.

12. From 1953-1954 concerns were raised across states that held a large bracero presence, such as Texas and California. The concerns were due to assimilation resistance coming from bracero and Mexican immigrants, along with the large number of border crossings occurring during an economic decline in the United States. Additionally, the end of the Bracero Program on December 31, 1964 set the baseline for many other immigration policies in the United States, such as Operation Wetback, Operation Gatekeeper, and the formation of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.

13. Translation from William Gates 1939 publication: Festering in the ears will be helped the most by instilling the root of the maza-yelli, seeds of xoxouhqui-patli plant, some leaves of the tlaquilin with a grain of salt in hot water. Also the leaves of two bushes, rubbed up, are to be smeared below the ears; these bushes are called tolova and tlapatl; also the precious stones tetlahuitl, tlacahuatzin, eztetl, xoxouhqui chalchihuitl, with the leaves of the tlatanquaye tree macerated in hot water, ground together and put in the stopped up ears, will open them.

14. Aranda et al., “La materia medica en el Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis,” 17.

15. Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez, “Time and the Ancestors,” in The Early Americas: History and Culture, eds. Corinne L. Hofman and Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen Vol. 5 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), 18-19.

16. Teresa Cupryn, “La expresión cósmica de la danza azteca,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales 37, no. 147 (1992): 45.

17. Mesa-Bains, "Spiritual Visions in Contemporary Art,” 2.

18. Patricia Chicueyi-Coatl Juarez, “How to Read Amoxtin,” Online Workshop UC Gill Tract Community Farm. Albany, California, May 23, 2020.

Dangers of Response: “I modi” and its Censorship

by Iakoiehwahtha Patton

Erotic imagery comprised a significant portion of artistic production in Renaissance Italy. It is within this cultural context that the reclining nude became an archetype and a contested site where censorship could be enacted. The nude was particularly criticized for its sinfulness, so much that in the late fifteenth century, the Dominican Friar, Girolamo Savonarola, fervently preached against artists who painted “figures with bare breasts.”¹ With the rise of the Protestant Reformation, these objections to the naked body only increased by the turn of the sixteenth century.² It is not surprising, then, that most erotic images disappeared over the course of the sixteenth century, despite the importance of the erotic within Renaissance visual culture.³ This relationship between art and censorship brings our attention to Giulio Romano’s I modi (c. 1520s), which represents the most controversial erotic visual material to emerge in sixteenth-century Italy.

I modi saw wide-scale destruction to the extent that all that remains of the original sixteen images in the series are fragments, two engravings, and a woodcut. Our knowledge of the original drawings and print series primarily comes from the Italian author Pietro Aretino’s sixteenth-century sonnet book published in Venice (1526), decades after the original drawings.⁴ In Italian, the title I modi has many interpretations, but it has been consistently translated into English as The Positions.⁵ However translated, the title describes what the series entails: sixteen heterosexual couples engaging in sexual acts in varying positions. The title and the figures are presented under no mythological guise or allegory. Rather than using Classical mythological imagery that borrowed from antique paradigms, I modi divulges itself as unmistakably and primarily erotic. Previous art historical scholarship has acknowledged the inherent eroticism of I modi but has done so within the broader context of erotic images that pervaded Renaissance Italy by focusing on I modi’s origins.⁶ In this essay, I nuance previous analyses by highlighting I modi’s reception and viewer participation within the discourse of censorship. Through the series’ unmitigated imagery, I modi became a provocative assemblage, building upon an antique topos with blatant sexual subject matter that is enlivened through viewer engagement. Much like the genre of the nude image, I modi, consequently, became a contested site that provoked widespread censorship.

The story of I modi’s production and dissemination unfolds in multiple parts. In the 1520s, Giulio Romano inherited Raphael’s lucrative and prestigious workshop in Rome after his death.⁷ In this position, he established an advantageous relationship with Marcantonio Raimondi, a printmaker to whom Romano supplied drawings.⁸ In Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (1550), Vasari provides the fullest written source that concerns the creation and reception of I modi.⁹ Yet even with Vasari’s text, questions remain regarding the intention and patronage behind Romano’s original drawings.¹⁰ In Le vite, Vasari indicates that Romano made twenty drawings of heterosexual couples engaging in explicit sexual acts under no mythological veil. These drawings were then given to Raimondi, who made a set of engravings based on Romano’s drawings in 1524. Influential author and satirist Pietro Aretino then wrote salacious sonnets to be paired with each image, which were drafted into a book in 1526. It is at this point that Pope Clement VII became enraged, the prints were banned, and Raimondi was imprisoned.¹¹ By the time the scandal occurred, Romano had accepted a position in Mantua at the court of Federico Gonzaga and, luckily for him, remained unscathed by the events in Rome.¹²

In reading Le vite, art historian Bette Talvacchia argues that Vasari’s intention was not to recall events accurately, but rather that Vasari intended to use the story of I modi as a warning against “outrage.”¹³ Vasari explicitly states that “the gifts of God should not be employed, as they very often are, in things wholly abominable, which are an outrage to the world.”¹⁴ Vasari was not only writing at a moment when the modern concept of the “artist as genius” was emerging, but was also an active creator of this myth. This condemnation is clear within its original context; in Le vite, Vasari constructs the biographies of famous Renaissance artists whilst defining boundaries for acceptable artistic behavior. Therefore, Vasari not only condoned I modi’s censorship, but actively participated in it by cementing the scandalous legacy.

Vasari’s text suggests that I modi’s replication and dissemination in print called for intervention. I modi was published during a historical moment in which erotic engravings as a genre were novel. In the late fifteenth century, erotic engravings were beginning to be produced for the art market, which allowed for wider accessibility and a new merchant-class clientele.¹⁵ Previously, erotic images were largely commissioned by and executed for the elite, whose social position guaranteed a controlled viewing context.¹⁶ This speaks to the strict boundary of what constituted fine art as opposed to what was seen as vulgar imitations of it. This boundary was dependent on which actors controlled erotic imagery and in this regard, the intended viewers were mostly men in elite circles with a level of humanist education. When removed from this controlled context, the images are free from constraints, allowing the observer to respond uninhibitedly.

In I modi’s printed reproductions, the series’ sexually explicit imagery is unmediated as it moves from the private elite sphere of individual drawings to the more public arena of circulated prints. In doing so, I modi transforms from a commissioned series of finished drawings by a renowned artist into scandalous, decontextualized reproductions by landing in the hands of what David Freedberg calls the “vulgas”; I modi became consumable by the masses.¹⁷ The already sexualized bodies are rendered objects charged with the ability to elicit natural, yet dangerous responses from the images’ viewers. In this respect, the body as a site for censorship serves as a mechanism of social and sexual control.

Though Romano’s originals no longer survive, copies in the form of prints and drawings have endured.¹⁸ Now housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), the Paris Position is a nineteenth-century hand-drawn replica of Position 1, the first in the original series by Romano (figs. 1 and 2).¹⁹ The Paris Position was originally drawn and owned by French antiquarian, Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck.²⁰ Waldeck not only drew the Paris Position but illustrated twenty wash drawings of I modi (fig. 3).²¹ Now, both are kept together at the BNF with a preface by Waldeck. In a Vasarian manner, Waldeck provides a history of the I modi scandal and his interest in the series. The Paris Position portrays a heterosexual couple embracing on a bed of sheets. The woman lies on her side, displaying her back as she holds her lover with her right arm and grasps the sheets with her left. Her breasts, genitalia, and the penetrative act are hidden, which are features that do not seem incidental when considering the print's survival. Rather than the sexual act itself, the formal emphasis is placed on the visual entanglement of limbs. Additionally, the woman recalls the docile, reclining nude popularized in sixteenth-century paintings, which provides a contrast to the active women in the other I modi prints (figs. 4-6).²² For a series that has only narrowly survived iconoclastic efforts, it is not by accident that the position with the least amount of sexual exhibitionism has survived in more than one example.

With sexual intercourse hidden, the observer of the Paris Position is prompted to fill in the blanks. The suggestion of penetration enhances its arousing aspect, thereby eliciting an imaginative engagement by the implied heterosexual male viewer. This type of viewer participation is even more explicit in I modi’s afterlife. The British Museum’s set of nine fragments has been reduced to torsos, heads, and limbs (fig. 7). Their treatment is decidedly violent. In their seemingly inoffensive states, the fragments only accentuate their erotic potential. Like the Paris Position, to engage with the fragments is to imagine their missing actions. Drawing upon Freedberg’s theory of viewer reception in The Power of Images, the “borderline” quality of the images is what elicits arousal.²³ In this regard, the “borderline” of what art is drives its erotic potential; tension is what renders I modi illicit. Ultimately, it is the censorship of I modi which attempted to quell the sexual response that drove its eroticism. The series’ heightened intrigue is attested to by its survival as collected objects, even in fragmented form.

In the Paris Position, the couple is flanked by two herms, whose inclusion conveys the Renaissance adoption of a classical precedent and hints at a broader sexualized Ovidian allusion.²⁴ The herms function not just as furnishings that support the drapery and frame the image, but they also act as witnesses to the sexual events unfolding before them. They are placeholders for the external viewers and function as second eyes through which the viewer engages with the sexual act. In this mirrored gaze, the intended heterosexual male viewer is implicated, allowing for a virtual, yet controlled, engagement with the couple as tangible figures. In applying Freedberg’s framework, the herms become enlivened participants in their voyeuristic attentiveness to the couple, thereby bringing attention to the relationship between looking, enlivening, and erotica that permeates the Paris Position.

Like sculpture, the affordance of both print media and drawings are their tactility. Within a controlled environment, the original I modi drawings would have been stored away from prying eyes, held in albums, only to be engaged with through the hands of an elite collector and in the company of peers educated in how to “correctly” interpret its imagery. Kept in albums, there is an aura of concealment; the images are “clothed” in their aristocratic context. In this manner, engaging with the drawings would have been an act of unclothing, though permissible for elite viewers. This engagement becomes problematic once the singular drawings are circulated in printed reproduction. Prints are ostensibly two-dimensional, but to engage with prints is to collect, hold, and possess them in a tactile manner. Like Pygmalion, the viewer-as-handler imbues life into the figures and their sexual exploits. Enacting this Pygmalion-like fantasy through an imaginative engagement, the figures become real fleshy beings that can be physically touched, engaged with, and possessed. Thus, the entire viewing experience of I modi is multisensory; the figures in the prints encourage real and imagined tactile responses, much like the sculptural herms. Ultimately, through this tactile engagement, the print and its figures are transformed into objects the viewer can possess.²⁵

The real and imagined possession of I modi would have therefore elicited arousal and potentially sinful responses. This was exacerbated when Pietro Aretino paired Raimondi’s prints with sexually explicit sonnets in 1526.²⁶ In Position I’s sonnet, Aretino provides both a male and female voice, perhaps to widen the intended implicit viewership to include women (fig. 8).²⁷ Nevertheless, Aretino’s female character vocalizes her desire, which grants her a form of agency that would be antithetical to contemporary attitudes concerning women’s ‘proper’ behavior—attitudes that upheld the virtues of silence. Consequently, Aretino’s text encourages the viewer’s engagement with the print as an enlivened image that now speaks, which further places the series in the profane realm, thereby resulting in its censorship.²⁸

I modi was the first instance of a series of unveiled, explicitly sexual imagery circulated in print throughout Renaissance Italy.²⁹ The entire program was novel; from its subject matter to its material form, both aspects played a role in I modi’s censorship. I modi exemplifies the anxieties that images of the sexualized body presented and the dangers of the implicit responses to it by both the elite and non-elite viewers. The printed reproductions of I modi operated within a contemporary discourse of sexuality, the dangers of the senses, and their necessary control.

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Appendix

Pietro Aretino, “Sonnet I.” In Les sonnets luxurieux du divin Pietro Aretino, 1526. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Translation by Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 199.

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Iakoiehwahtha Patton approaches her scholarship on the Northern Renaissance at the intersection of gender, colonialism, and artistic representations. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto where she was the President of the History of Art Students’ Association and wrote on land, coloniality, and their manifestations in art. Now an MSt student at Oxford, Iako focuses on the gendering of death in the funerary arts of Renaissance France. 

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1. Jill Burke, “Nudity, Art, and the Viewer,” in The Italian Renaissance Nude (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 70.

2. Burke, “Nudity, Art, and the Viewer,” 69-70.

3. In the Italian Renaissance, the erotic nude emphasized the sensual nature of the body, often veering into the pornographic. As such, these depictions were generally confined to elite circles and their private collections. Not every nude in the Renaissance was erotic; in fact many works of classical or religious themes included nude subjects. Nevertheless, the common thread linking the nude and the erotic nude during the Renaissance was the overarching humanist interest with the human form in art. Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, “Satyrs and sausages: erotic strategies and the print market in Cinquecento Italy,” in Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 20.

4. Bette Talvacchia, “The Historical Situation,” in Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 5.

5. Bette Talvacchia, “Introduction,” in Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), ix.

6. See Talvacchia, Matthews-Grieco, and James Grantham Turner, “Marcantonio’s Lost Modi and Their Copies,” Print Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2004): 363–84.

7. Talvacchia, “The Historical Situation,” 4.

8. Talvacchia, 4. 

9. Talvacchia, 6.

10. Further study may consider how our understanding of I modi would change depending on the intentions of Giulio Romano and his patron.

11. Around 1524, Pope Clement VII became involved in an effort to regulate artistic production and printed material, especially those deemed indecent. As a result, Marcantonio was briefly imprisoned for his production of I modi in print format. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors & architects, volume 6 (London: Macmillan, 1912-15), 103; Talvacchia, “The Historical Situation,” 6.

12. Talvacchia, 4.

13. Talvacchia, 7.

14. Talvacchia, 6; Vasari, Lives, 105.

15. Matthews-Grieco, “Satyrs and sausages,” 19.

16. Matthews-Grieco, “Satyrs and sausages,” 21.

17. David Freedberg, “The Senses and Censorship,” in The Power of Images: Studies in the History & Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 361.

18. Talvacchia (xi-xii) posits that the drawings were most likely for elite collectors, which have not been located. Despite the fact that the first edition engravings no longer survive due to their confiscation and heavy censorship, early modern collecting practices and appetite for the erotic have secured I modi’s afterlife.

19. The Paris Position is compositionally similar to the London Position and Vienna woodcut in showing Position 1. Unfortunately, the Vienna woodcut has been lost. However, the London Position has been attributed to Agostino Veneziano and, as James Grantham Turner (2004) has argued, is likely the source for I modi’s later copies, including, perhaps, the Paris Position. Therefore, the Paris Position likely provides insight into what the original engravings after the Romano drawing looked like.

20. Mary Rebecca Darby Smith and Henry Hopkins, Recollections of Two Distinguished Persons: La Marquise de Boissy and the Count de Waldeck (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1878), 60, 66.

21. James Grantham Turner, “Marcantonio’s Lost Modi and Their Copies,” Print Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2004): 363-366.

22. An important example of the reclining nude is the Venus of Urbino by Titian (1534) including its numerous variations.

23. Freedberg, “The Senses and Censorship,” 355-356.

24. In Book 10 of Metamorphoses, Ovid recalls the tale of Pygmalion, the sculptor who carved his ideal maiden from ivory. After praying to the gods for a wife as beautiful as his creation, Pygmalion’s sculpture is brought to life by Venus. The poem describes Pygmalion’s relations with the ivory figure as erotically tactile: he touches, kisses, strokes, and “[feels] the ivory soften / under his fingers.” As a medium, sculpture is profoundly tactile and the reception of sculpture rests upon its engagement as a spatial object. With its poetic underpinnings in ancient texts, touch is emphasized by early modern Italian writers as an essential component of sculpture’s appreciation. The prints’ intended viewers would have been familiar with both the sacred and profane handling of sculpture, from those collected in the studiolo to movable religious icons. In this way, the herms elicit a tactile response in the viewer, becoming enlivened figures through their visual engagement as sculptured beings. J. D. Reed, “Book 10,” in Ovid: Metamorphoses, translated by Rolfe Humphries (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018), 243 (line 286-287).

25. Freedberg, “The Senses and Censorship,” 353.

26. Pietro Aretino. “Sonnet I,” in Les sonnets luxurieux du divin Pietro Aretino, 1526. Bibliothèque Nationale de France; See appendix for sonnet and translation.

27. Aretino’s sonnets would have provided a rare opportunity for women to view images depicting female sexual agency and desire alongside poetry with similar themes. The illustrated sonnets would have represented a departure from more traditional depictions of passive women experiencing sexual encounters, and thus may have encouraged Renaissance women to explore and articulate their own desires.

28. Freedberg, “The Senses and Censorship,” 350-353.

29. Talvacchia, “Introduction,” xi.