Le sexe, cet à-côté de la femme. Réceptions des images vulvaires en Italie au XVe siècle (Gentile da Fabriano, Sandro Botticelli)

What do a Venus by Sandro Botticelli, a Madonna by Gentile da Fabriano and Helen of Troy by Zanobi Strozzi have in common? In these paintings, the vulva has been extracted from the groin of the female figure and moved to another area. In this way, the folds of a drape or the wooden knot of a lectern support a vulvar image, i.e. a visual form that, without exactly reproducing a female sex, allows its presence to be perceived. The shift in this figurative object leads from the figure – condensed, according to the theories of the Quattrocento, from the entire art of painting – to its parergon – that over-determining accessory charged with meaning and emotion (Aby Warburg). The question of the viewer’s active vision generated by these motifs will be addressed, leading us to a question: what was the visibility and significance of these vulgar images?