Louise Rice is an art history professor at New York University and the 2013-14 Allen W. Clowes Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Her publications include numerous essays, articles and reviews of the art and architecture of Baroque Rome.
Rice spoke with staff writer Robert McNeely about the special lecture she’ll be delivering at the National Humanities Center titled: “Plenty of Horns: The ‘Cuckoldries’ of Baccio del Bianco.” The lecture is on a series of black chalk drawings done by Florentine artist Baccio del Bianco depicting the literary archetype of the cuckold — a husband with an adulterous wife.
Daily Tar Heel: Why are you interested in these drawings in particular?
Louise Rice: Well, I was asked to contribute to a volume of essays on the figure of the cuckold in Renaissance art and literature, and the drawings by Baccio del Bianco about which I’ll be speaking have everything to do with that subject. The drawings depict daily life in 17th-century Florence, only the joke is that all of the men are wearing horns because they all have wives who are unfaithful to them. The Renaissance had an obsessive fascination with the figure of the cuckold. He shows up in literature, he shows up in art, and Baccio explores, through this series of drawings, almost every conceivable joke and gag ever applied to the idea. This is a fascinating area of research, it has relevance for cultural and social history but also for the study of gender, the study of sexuality and so forth. I have to admit that, for me, this material is something of a departure, but it has been great fun exploring the topic.
DTH: What was the cultural significance of these drawings at the time?
LR: For anyone at all interested in the social and cultural history of the Renaissance, and even more for those interested in the study of gender and sexuality, the figure of the cuckold has a lot of relevance. He’s a stock figure in the literature of the time — Chaucer, Shakespeare, in many of the great authors of that period. The cuckold was seen as a comic character, you understand. He elicits laughter on the part of the viewer. But underlying the comedy are keenly-felt social anxieties.
DTH: What about the significance now?
LR: It’s absolutely relevant today. As I was driving in, I was listening to NPR and there was a piece about the recent protests in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive, and the reason for this, if you can dignify it with the term reason, is that it will lead to irresponsible or licentious behavior on their part. What lies behind all of this are the same sort of misogynist fears and phobias that inspired Baccio’s drawings.
I don’t want to get too serious about it, though, because as I said, the drawings are lighthearted and funny. Above all they’re meant to make you laugh. Though behind that comedy there’s a great deal of subtext, and Baccio was most definitely satirizing the societal norms of his time.
