Art

Renaissance Art

Unlike the art and learning that characterized much of the Renaissance, punishment, often left over from medieval times, was cruel, unusual, and torturous. Each of these readings graphically illustrates the types of torture used as punishment during these times, indicating how heinous the punishments were, and how very public these types of executions often were.

What ties all these works together, rather incredibly, is their ties to Renaissance art, which is, at first difficult to imagine. However, author Terry ties the use of bronze sculpture for torture in the craft of torture: Bronze sculptures and the punishment of sexual offence. The author illustrates how these horrible instruments of pain were at least sometimes carefully handcrafted out of precious materials, as if to further tie their purpose to the Church and religious beliefs, especially when it came to some of the most heinous crimes, such as sodomy. The tool the author describes is delicately carved with the face of a devil, as if to further underscore the religious nature of the punishment and the crime.

Other instruments, such as pinchers and other devices, were also created by artisans of the time, who at one point, seemed to have quite a business creating these instruments of destruction. To counterpoint that, the third author discusses the many images of childbirth that were created during the Renaissance, also handcrafted, which helped celebrate babies coming into the world. It is not impossible to imagine that some of these images, often created to give mothers comfort before and after the birth, could have been created by the very same artists and craftsmen who were creating tools for torture and pain during the same time.

It is interesting to note how different the uses of art and artistic talent were during this time. Today, it seems a juxtaposition for an artist to create tools used to maim and kill another human, but at the time, it was commonplace and even "normal," as these essays indicate.

References

Musacchio, J.M. The art and ritual of childbirth in Renaissance Italy.

Sheridan, a. Discipline and punish: Birth of the prison.

Terry, a. The craft of torture: Bronze sculptures and the punishment of sexual offence.