Lotte Lund:
"Rebelling bodies"

Much renaissance literature and painting praise human sexuality. The Italian book I Modi represents the human body and sexual lust in a shameless, liberated way that contrasts and ridicules the norms of the Church - while a new type of prostitutes, the courtesans, is idealized by poets and painters (and accepted by the Church). On the other hand, in religious art and reformatory/counterreformatory politics, sexuality is used in a disciplinary way that connects sexuality with sin and shame. Sexuality is thus questioned and grows to be an important subject demanding individual reflection and positioning. A process which alienates the individual from his/her own sexuality. Renaissance sexuality can thus be characterised as a consciousness-raising dialectical alternation between liberation and alienation - an alternation which ushers in the modern sexuality.