On Sunday, November 3, 2013, the Springfield Museums will host a lecture by John Varriano titled Erotic Appetites: Food, Art, and Sex in the Italian Renaissance. The talk will take place at 2 pm in the Davis Auditorium of the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, and is free with museum admission.
The provocative title reflects how eroticism and sexuality were being represented by artists during the Renaissance. Varianno’s talk will focus on how paintings of food during this period commonly included two genres of sexual allusion. The first involved exploiting the sexually suggestive shapes of certain fruits and vegetables, and the second was linking the eating habits of the different social classes to stereotypical notions of sexuality and procreative success.
Varriano taught Art History at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts from 1970, the year he received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, until his retirement in 2009. He chaired his department for four terms and was named Idella Plimpton Kendall Professor in 1994.
For more information, please call 413.263.6800, ext. 488.