"Anyway, the popularity of the hermaphrodite in art and legend kind of went into decline after the end of the Roman Empire," Professor Cavendish continued, "You don't really see any images like these during the mediaeval period. However, suddenly, in the renaissance they become popular again. In the 16th century writers like Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney wrote some of the major works of English poetry containing characters crossdressed and acting like the other gender. Of course, this is the age of boys dressing as girls to act on the stage. Just look at Shakespeare's plays, all the female parts would have been played by boys. In quite a lot of the plays these female characters then disguise themselves as boys once more. So, you've got boys playing girls playing boys. Obviously people in that age were interested in how fluid gender roles could be.
"This was also an age of new scientific interest in people being born intersex. In 1573, the French surgeon Ambroise Pare wrote about hermaphrodites in his On Monsters and Prodigies. In 1612, the Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin wrote On the Nature of the Births of Hermaphrodites and Monsters, complete with illustrations that recalled the classical beauty of the ancient hermaphrodite statues. In the same year, a woman condemned to death as a lesbian was given a reprieve because she was a hermaphrodite and, therefore, could legitimately claim to be male."
"I know all this already, Jane," Saphy said, a little frustrated, "This was all on your course."
"Yes, it's all very interesting," Gabe agreed, "But I don't see what it has to do with the Venus painting."
"I'm getting to that, have a little patience," Professor Cavendish gently chided. She took another book from the pile on her desk and opened it to another glossy photo of a statue, "The real thing that made the legend of Hermaphroditus particularly popular in the 1600s was this. It's a Roman copy of a bronze statue by Polycles, a Greek sculptor about 150 years before the birth of Christ. The statue was lost for centuries, but in around 1600 it was rediscovered in Rome when digging for the foundations of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a man with a huge amount of power in the church, an art collector rumoured to have been gay, took ownership of the statue, which became known as the Borghese Hermaphroditus. It was an image that was hugely popular and much reproduced over the next few decades. It's now on display in the Louvre in Paris."
"So?" Gabe asked.
Professor Cavendish turned the open page of her book around on the desk so Gabe and Saphy could see the image of the statue. Beside it, she opened a second book, Venus in Renaissance Art, with a glossy reproduction of the Rokeby Venus, an image that had embedded itself into Gabe's mind over the past few days.
"Look familiar?" she asked.
She was right. The image of the Borghese Hermaphroditus showed the statue of what appeared to be a beautiful woman viewed from behind. She was reclining, lying on her side slightly propped up on her elbow with her head raised above this, emphasising the curve of the narrow waist and wide hips. It was the exact same posture as that of Venus in the painting. However, while the painting could only be viewed from that one angle, with the statue the other side was visible in another reproduced image and that showed the beautiful reclining feminine figure to have a penis resting between her thighs.
"So, what you're saying is..." Gabe began
"The secret of the Rokeby Venus is that she isn't Venus at all," Professor Cavendish confirmed, "It's a painting of Hermaphroditus!"