Homeroticism in Asia / Sexuality & The Illustrated Text - Homosexual and Lesbian Sex in Shunga Shunga / Ukiyo in Japan The word "ukiyo," means "floating world," and is Buddhist in origin.  Prior to the Tokugawa period (1603 to 1868) the phrase suggested a sadness or anxiety regarding the transitory nature of this world.  During this later period ukiyo came to mean a location of pleasure, consumption, sensuality, and hedonism, but with a positive connotation of "the world of pleasure." The term, Shunga, is translated as "Images of Spring", as the word spring has connections to the idea of youthful sexuality and vigor. For example the phrase, "selling spring," relates to the sale of sexual services, although the meaning is different in the emotive sense than the English term "prostitution." Shunga is a very general term used to describe Japanese erotic prints, books, scrolls and paintings. Many ukiyo or shunga are colored woodblock prints which were produced for a mass audience and were the most popular art form of the time.  In the Tokugawa period vast numbers of these works were made using this simple printing process, which enabled the prints to be priced affordably enough for the general public to enjoy.  The most popular of these works dealt with beauty and sex and show celebrities such as actors, sumo wrestlers and courtesans, the celebrations of youth, love, sexuality, nature and human emotions.   All artists involved with this process of print making were also making Shunga works and no shame was associated with the creation, sale or ownership of these erotic images, which reflected the fact that Japanese society held the belief that the body and sex were a part of the natural world. Men, youths and courtesans in a brothel, Ishikawa Toyonobu, Folio of woodblock print on paper, c. 1730-40 Many  shunga or ukiyo depict male-male sex and female-female sex acts, although it was not until the 1990's that much writing on these works was published.  This was due in part to official Japanese censorship.  It was also previously thought that all shunga were created for a male audience, but more recently this had been disproved.  Inagaki Tsurujo is a female artist from the 18th century who painted Woman Manipulating a Glove Puppet, which is a not-so subtle image expressing female sexuality and control. This is an example of a painting which does not directly depict a sex act. Similarly there are many shunga works which depict social scenes of everyday life where homosexual love is only hinted at and much is left to the imagination. There are also images of courtship, kissing and fondling as well as more explicit images. The earliest shunga works are by Hishikawa Moronobu and his school from 1660 to 1670 and were created as erotic manuals for courtesans.  With growing prosperity in Edo (Tokyo) merchants were becoming wealthier and embracing shunga as part of a lifestyle of leisure and diversions. Stores in the pleasure quarters of Edo, sold shung ...

1. Homeroticism in Asia / Sexuality & The Illustrated Text -
Homosexual and Lesbian Sex in Shunga
Shunga / Ukiyo in Japan
The word "ukiyo," means "floating world," and is Buddhist in
origin. Prior to the Tokugawa period (1603 to 1868) the phrase
suggested a sadness or anxiety regarding the transitory nature of
this world. During this later period ukiyo came to mean a
location of pleasure, consumption, sensuality, and
hedonism, but with a positive connotation of "the world of
pleasure." The term, Shunga, is translated as "Images of
Spring", as the word spring has connections to the idea of
youthful sexuality and vigor. For example the phrase, "selling
spring," relates to the sale of sexual services, although the
meaning is different in the emotive sense than the English term
"prostitution." Shunga is a very general term used to describe
Japanese erotic prints, books, scrolls and paintings. Many ukiyo
or shunga are colored woodblock prints which were produced
for a mass audience and were the most popular art form of the
time. In the Tokugawa period vast numbers of these works were
made using this simple printing process, which enabled the
prints to be priced affordably enough for the general public to
enjoy. The most popular of these works dealt with beauty and
sex and show celebrities such as actors, sumo wrestlers and
courtesans, the celebrations of youth, love, sexuality, nature and
human emotions. All artists involved with this process of print
making were also making Shunga works and no shame was
associated with the creation, sale or ownership of these erotic
images, which reflected the fact that Japanese society held the
belief that the body and sex were a part of the natural world.
Men, youths and courtesans in a brothel, Ishikawa Toyonobu,
Folio of woodblock print on paper, c. 1730-40
Many shunga or ukiyo depict male-male sex and female-female
sex acts, although it was not until the 1990's that much writing
on these works was published. This was due in part to official

2. Japanese censorship. It was also previously thought that all
shunga were created for a male audience, but more recently this
had been disproved. Inagaki Tsurujo is a female artist from the
18th century who painted Woman Manipulating a Glove Puppet,
which is a not-so subtle image expressing female sexuality and
control.
This is an example of a painting which does not directly depict
a sex act. Similarly there are many shunga works which depict
social scenes of everyday life where homosexual love is only
hinted at and much is left to the imagination. There are also
images of courtship, kissing and fondling as well as more
explicit images.
The earliest shunga works are by Hishikawa Moronobu and his
school from 1660 to 1670 and were created as erotic manuals
for courtesans. With growing prosperity in Edo (Tokyo)
merchants were becoming wealthier and embracing shunga as
part of a lifestyle of leisure and diversions. Stores in the
pleasure quarters of Edo, sold shunga prints and books to their
visitors. In the 1760's as multi-colour woodblock printing
became more popular, shunga florished both aesthetically and
commercially. Prior to the Tokugawa period, the term "ukiyo,"
"floating world," conjured up mental images of sadness and
anxiety regarding the transitory nature of this world. The term,
of course, is of Buddhist origin.
Handcolored woodblock print by Hishikawa Moronobu, series
’Yoshiwara no tei’, lobby of a brothel, c. 1680
During the Tokugawa period, however, the
term ukiyo underwent a transformation. It came to mean a place
of pleasure, consumption, sensuality, and hedonism, but with a
positive connotation of "the world of pleasure." After the
Tokugawa period, during the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) major
change took place in Japan, including changes in attitudes about
sexual behavior and the opening of the country to the West. In
modern times the state began to take more interest in the

3. regulation of sexual activity and the range of proper or
generally acceptable (socially, morally, legally or otherwise)
sexual behaviors narrowed significantly. Overall sexual
freedom was curtailed and the country went from having a
minimal consciousness of heterosexuality vs. homosexuality to
a strong opposition to homosexuality. During the Meiji period
only a few artists specialized in designing shunga prints. Japan
turned towards the west in an effort to modernize. This meant
that aspects of Japanese culture deemed "uncivilized" by the
censorious Victorian gaze began to be hidden or thrown
away completely. Erotic art in general and homosexual
representations in particular went underground. Today, these
images are still prohibited but classified as erotica and therefore
tolerated. It is nevertheless not permitted to import them into
the country. Shunga are rarely discussed in Japan, although
managa and anime borrow from this venerable form of art.
Print from Kitagawa Utamaro, The Pillow Book (Uta Makura),
1788.
Returning to the Tokugawa period, homosexuality, in Japanese
called nansoku meaning 'male love' or 'male colors', was not an
uncommon during this time and was made popular or acceptable
by the upper class of samurai or warriors. Among this class it
was typical for an adolescent boy or wakashu train in martial
arts with a more experienced adult man, who could take the
young man as a lover, but only if the wakashu agreed. This
could be formalized into a "brotherhood contact" and was
necissarily exclusive. This practice, became codified as a kind
of age-structured homosexuality called shudō. The older nenja,
would teach the wakashū martial arts, and the samurai code of
honor, which was meant to lead the adult to also become a
better person and role model. This relationship was thought to
be mutually beneficial. At the same time, as male-male sex did
not preclude marriage or intimacy with women, what we
considered today to be bisexuality is most close to what we are
discussing in the Tokugawa period. In the early years of the

4. Tokugawa regime men greatly outnumbered women in Edo.
There were very strict rules imposed by the government inspired
by the loyal standards of Confucianism which excluded women
to participate in any kind of work with the exception of
household tasks. These regulations and the shortage of women
can be seen as deciding factors for the huge amount of
homosexual activities. The most characteristic feature of the
depictions in shunga of male-male sex is the relation between
the two involved "lovers". The leading and dominant male with
his shaven head is always the older one, this on the basis of
seniority or higher social status, while the subjected passive
partner was a young man depicted with a unshaven forelock.
These young boys are often shown in female cloths. They
served as pages to high ranking samurai's, monks, wealthy
merchants or older servants. The focus in many of these works
is not suppose to be purely on a sex act but also on the garments
and elegant lines of the body.
While there was a Japanese term for male-male (nanshoku) and
male-female sex, joshoku or nyoshoku meaning 'female love',
there was no such word to describe female-female sex or
lesbianism. Most of the shunga regarding explicitly female
concentrated designs depicted either isolated women
masturbating or two intimate women using this same sexual
device. Hokusai (1760-1849), the most famous Ukiyo-e master
designed two lesbian ehon (book) prints. Most of these It must
be images of lesbianism in shunga were intended for a mal e
audience.
Hokusai (1760-1849) c.1814
Erotic prints of the Tokugawa period use a variety of symbols
which we may not understand just by looking at the works.
Water is often connected with male sexuality due to its
relationship to the yin yang. Tokugawa period prints also
commonly featured vaginal symbols, which tended to be more
subtle than the phallic ones. The most common vaginal symbol,
however, was the sleeve. Clothing in general--especially

5. expensive clothing--often served as an eroticized surface
in shunga (much like the function of skin in Western-style
erotic imagery). The sleeves of the robes worn at this time were
long, wide, and contained several openings.
The plum and cherry blossoms, favorite images in classical
Japanese literature, figured prominently in the repertoire of
Tokugawa erotic symbols. The interplay of these symbols could
be quite complex, but the basic meaning of the plum blossom
was male sexuality and the basic meaning of the cherry blossom
was female sexuality. These meanings could be heterosexual or
homosexual in nature depending on the context, and in certain
homoerotic contexts the cherry blossom could indicate a boy
partner of an older man. To "break" a cherry blossom or a plum
blossom--in the sense of breaking off a twig or small branch on
which the flowers are blooming--meant to offer one's sexuality
to another.
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Notes on lesbian
Laura Cottingham
n attempt to construct a lesbian history, whether it
be sociological or art historical, involves con-
fronting silence, erasure, misrepresentation, and
prejudice-all of which present formidable obstacles to
historical research and writing. How is it possible to recon-
struct a story from evidence that is partial, absent, hidden,
denied, obfuscated, trivialized, and otherwise suppressed?
The traditional methodology of historical research, and by
extension the value system used to evaluate the quality of
texts written in the name of history, is necessarily overde-
termined by a prioritization of primary sources. But what if
these primary sources do not exist because governments
have not counted or otherwise documented the historical
subject(s); or because the social and political persecution
of said subject(s) has encouraged them to silence them-
selves; or because prejudice has enabled families and
biographers to destroy documents such as letters and
diaries that contain the crucial content that might consti -
tute testimony or evidence? Some lesbian historians

7. understandably believe that more information about les-
bians in the past exists than we now know of or have access
to and that, therefore, more primary sources and more tra-
ditional history is forthcoming. But it might also just as
easily be assumed that the availability of written proof of
lesbians and lesbianism is significantly less present and
existent than lesbians and lesbianism in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century European and American history have in
fact been.
Although the traditional historical practices of exca-
vation and recontextualization have yielded valuable con-
tributions to the understanding and construction of
European and American lesbian history by scholars such
as Lillian Faderman and Barbara Smith in the United
States, Ilse Kokula in Germany, and the Lesbian History
Group in the United Kingdom, published texts by these
and others invariably begin with an enunciation of the par-
ticular problems raised in rendering lesbians visible given
how deliberately and successfully patriarchy has made us
invisible. Even more often, patriarchal societies have dis -
allowed women the possibility of being lesbian at all, in
which case it is extremely difficult to produce and leave
behind lesbian documents.
The introduction to a recent work by the London-
based Lesbian History Group, Not a Passing Phase:
Reclaiming Lesbians in History, 1840-1985, outlines some
of the distinct problems lesbian historians face:
Writing the history of women is difficult because in a patri-
archal society (i.e., one organized in the interests of men)
fewer sources concerning women exist and those that do
have often been ignored as "unimportant," or have been
altered. The task of the feminist historian is first to rescue

8. women from oblivion, and then to interpret women's experi -
ence within the context of the society of the time.
This is also true for the lesbian historian. In her case,
however, the problem of sources is magnified a thousand-
fold. First, there is relatively little explicit information about
lesbian lives in the past, though probably much more than
we know about at the moment. Second, much important
material has been suppressed as irrelevant, or its signifi -
cance overlooked by scholars pursuing a different theory.
Material may have been omitted as "private" or likely to
embarrass the family or alienate the reader. Much of the evi -
dence we do have has been distorted by historians who will -
fully or through ignorance have turned lesbian lives into
"normal" heterosexual ones. Women can be ignored, but les-
bians must be expunged.
Lesbians do not usually leave records of their lives.
Those who do may not include any details which would
identify them as unmistakably lesbians.'
WINTER 1996
72
It is, after all, one of the central political problems of histo-
ry, as both a philosophical construct and an academic dis-
cipline, that it can only be written-that is, it can only
exist-from what has both already existed and still now
exists. Additionally, history not only depends on the preex-
istence of a material world of (already) lived experience, it
also depends on both the existence and the accuracy of
documents for and of the already-lived, as well as the
interpretation of those documents. Given that what history

9. we do know is a narrative of male supremacy no matter how
subversively or productively we choose to interpret or uti -
lize it, how is it theoretically possible to expect that the
documentary evidence left behind could yield lesbian
information that is in any way commensurate to or reflec-
tive of lesbian experience?
Lesbian history invariably confronts the most pro-
found conundrum of the basic premise of history, for it
must address not only what has or has not been left behind
by way of documentary remains (and how to decode them
through the distorted lens of the present), but must in addi -
tion confront the successful assimilation of women into
heterosexuality and ask why this has occurred. For to
understand lesbians, past and present, we must acknowl-
edge that the lesbian functions within historical parame-
ters that constitute a hard-earned escape from the
politically enforced narrative of heterosexuality. The per -
sistence of such neutralized misnomers as sexual prefer-
ence mask the coercive function of heterosexuality by
setting up a false premise that equates same-gender and
cross-gender affections (although "sexual preference" is
usually only called in to label gays or lesbians). Sexual
preference also deliberately disables any full understanding
of lesbians and lesbianism by relegating both our histories
and our bodies to the limited realm of sexual activity.
Even when lesbianism is consciously and obviously
73
Lesbian Art Project, Lesbian Fashion Show, ca. 1977-79,
unidentified model,
staged at the Los Angeles Woman's Building.
enunciated in textual and visual representation, readers

10. and viewers and critics often remain determined to ignore
it. An example given in Barbara Smith's introduction to
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology should be familiar
to most American readers of this essay, as it concerns the
1982 winner of both the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and the
American Book Award for what became a 1985 Hollywood
feature that garnered Academy Award nominations across
the board: Alice Walker's The Color Purple. In her exami -
nation of the forces that keep lesbianism, and most espe-
cially black lesbianism, unmentionable, Smith writes:
Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple, is a marvel because
it so clearly depicts the origins of contemporary Black femi -
nism in the lives of our mothers, in this case of poor women
living in the rural South. It also represents a breakthrough
in both the context of trade publishing and Black literature,
because of its original and positive portrayal of a Black les -
bian relationship. Not surprisingly, in the unanimously pos-
itive reviews of The Color Purple, Black and white critics
have steadfastly refused even to mention the true subject of
the book.2
ART JOURNAL
74
Lesbian Art Project, Lesbian Fashion Show, ca. 1977-79,
unidentified model,
staged at the Los Angeles Woman's Building.
Similar and more recent examples of not-seeing and
not-naming the lesbian could be listed ad infinitum. In a
book of Berenice Abbott photographs, recently repub-
lished in 1990, the foreword by Muriel Rukeyser takes

11. pains to call the reader's attention to Abbott's portraits of
James Joyce, Andre Gide, and Jacques Cocteau but fails to
reveal the fact that Abbott photographed high culture's Left
Bank lesbian set of the 1920s, and that Abbott's charmed
lesbian circle is featured one-by-one in the portraits of
Jane Heap, Sylvia Beach, Princess Eugene Murat, Janet
Flanner, Djuna Barnes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and-
from their countenances and appearances-many of the
other women featured in the book.3 Not to acknowledge
Abbott's lesbianism is not to understand her art or her sub-
jects. Such disacknowledgment also functions to deny les-
bians access to our cultural history, thus allowing the
heterosexual regime to claim it falsely for themselves.
Likewise, the lesbian life and art of the French photogra-
pher Claude Cahun, a contemporary of Abbott's, was
exhibited for the first time in a large retrospective at the
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1995. Cahun's
work, which consists mostly of defiant, ironic, and direct-
gaze self-portraits produced during the 1930s and 1940s,
is hardly helped or sufficiently explained by the heterosex-
ist writings included in the recent catalogues of her work.4
Some understanding of the lesbian subculture of Paris
before World War II should be as necessary an art histori -
cal tool to comprehending Cahun (or Abbott!) as is some
knowledge of French-especially considering that Cahun
collaborated with her lover Suzanne Malherbe on many of
their photomontages. The particularities of lesbian life, as
historicized and grounded in social experience, are still
not accepted as even appropriate, much less necessary, art
historical tools. How often have I been asked, by hetero-
sexual art historians and critics after a few glasses of wine,
whether it really matters at all whether an artist is lesbian
or gay? Let me say that for many of us it matters a great
deal-and it is obviously of significant importance to gov-
ernments past and present that have enacted, and continue

12. to enact, laws and other prohibitions against us.
Perhaps, though, as with the silence around The
Color Purple, the problem of not naming the lesbianism in
the art of Abbott, Cahun, and others is related to hetero-
sexuality's ideological imperative that lesbianism cannot
be mentioned or shown if this is done with approval. It
appears that lauding lesbianism-not just describing it-
is the most unmentionable deed. For Abbott's photograph-
ic portraits of friends and lovers, Cahun's self-portraits,
and Walker's fictional narrative render lesbianism and the
women who live it with dignity and approval.
The disacknowledgment of artists and writers who
are lesbians, and of art and literary productions that are
lesbian, colludes with the disapproval that lesbianism
meets in social and political life. And in academic life. As
Marilyn Frye has observed in "A Lesbian's Perspective on
Women's Studies," women's studies departments across the
United States are locked into an understanding of women
that aggressively accepts the heterosexualization of women
as normal and the marginalization of lesbians as natural or
inevitable. Frye suggests a reconsideration of what sexual
politics in the university might be if it weren't heterosexist
politics:
Imagine a real reversal of the heterosexualist teaching our
program provides. Imagine thirty faculty members at a
large university engaged routinely and seriously in the vig-
orous and aggressive encouragement of women to be Les-
bians, helping them learn skills and ideas for living as
Lesbians, teaching the connections between Lesbianism and
WINTER 1996

13. feminism and between heterosexism and sexism, building
understanding of the agency of individual men in keeping
individual women in line for the patriarchy. Imagine us
openly and actively advising women not to marry, not to
fuck, not to become bonded with any man. Imagine us
teaching lots of Lesbian literature, poetry, history and art in
women's studies courses, and teaching out of a politics deter -
mined by Lesbian perception and sensibility.5
Writing about lesbians and lesbian art from a lesbian
position that affirms and approves of lesbian existence is
itself an act of advocacy, just as the number of dissertations
and monographs and the amount of money Europe and the
United States heap on white male artists is a form of politi-
cal as well as cultural approval. Unless more lesbians are
willing to accept the necessity of advocating our right to
exist and our right to our cultural heritage, our history as
well as our present and future will continue to be lost,
denied, trivialized, and otherwise damaged.
For it is impossible for lesbian history to come into a
recognizable cultural space until lesbians are themselves
more visible in their/our own time. Unless we insist on our
lesbian selves, unless we articulate ourselves visibly as
such in the present, history will no doubt continue to erase
us, and the lesbian historians of the future will be left with
fragments and puzzles not much better than the ones we
possess of the past today. Freeing ourselves from the self-
censorship imposed on us is perhaps one of the most vital
concerns contemporary lesbians face. One need only
encounter cultural materials as otherwise dissimilar as the
memoirs of French novelist and writer Marguerite Yourcenar
or the New York Daily News interview with the comedian
Ellen DeGeneres to witness how pervasive the necessity of
lesbian self-erasure still is.6 And I have yet to enter any

14. academic institution or situation in the United States that
is free of a hiding, self-silenced, fearful lesbian: women
who are unwilling to live heterosexualized, but still unable
to publicly enunciate themselves as lesbians.
A significant historical turning point for lesbian his-
tory in the United States is the period during the 1970s
when lesbianism was chosen, celebrated, and culturally
enunciated within the women's liberationist organizing of
second wave feminism. Although individual lesbians had
declared themselves as such before 1970, it was within the
public discourse of the women's liberation movement that
lesbianism was verbalized, aestheticized, collectivized,
.-..
^.
i A :
BaLw,pooelgfoLebaAtPoet198ofelihgah Bia Lowe, proposed
logo for Lesbian Art Project, 1978, offset lithography.
Bia Lowe, proposed logo for Lesbian Art Project, 1978, offset
lithography.
and otherwise actively demonstrated outside the confines
of the personal, the private, the salon, and the bar. It was
during the women's liberation movement, and despite the
efforts of mainstream feminism's self-defined heterosexual-
ists, that lesbianism became, quite simply, an issue, and
sought to escape from the taxonomies of personal idiosyn-
crasy, scandal, gossip, or cause for recantation within
which lesbianism had previously dis-functioned.
It is not surprising then, that lesbian history has
emerged in academic scholarship only after 1970, after the
moment when lesbians, seemingly for the first time in his-

15. tory, announced themselves as a self-recognized group-as
a people who could, therefore, have a history. Given that
the very idea of history relies on the acceptance of a cate-
gorical imperative, of an understanding of a sense of conti -
nuity through a formal arrangement of things or
people-whether it be the concept of a nation (the United
States of America), a culture (the Japanese), a religion
(Christianity), or an ongoing production of related objects
or forms (abstract painting)-there could be no history of
lesbians if lesbians did not first declare themselves deci -
sively as an entity, as a people who exist across time and
space (and, relevant to the paradigm of lesbian identity,
across nationalized and cultural boundaries), and as a peo-
ple for whom a collective identity is accepted as apt
despite the invariable differences that exist between any
members of an acknowledged group. The personal and col-
lective energies lesbians exerted on behalf of lesbianism
during and within the 1970s women's liberation movement
also helped produce an increase in the number of women
willing and able to live as lesbians.7
ART JOURNAL
75
At the same time, it would appear that the general
cultural declaration made by lesbians in the United States
during the 1970s is still not considered by many to be
enough to warrant our inclusion in either history or popular
consciousness. Or perhaps it was precisely because les-
bianism was so loudly enunciated during the 1970s that
subsequent historical accounts have sought and continue to
seek to diminish it. I base this assertion on the erasure and
minimalization of lesbians and lesbianism from historical

16. accounts of the 1970s; in particular I am concerned here
with the heterosexualization of the feminist art movement.
The feminist art movement that emerged in the Unit-
ed States during the 1970s has yet to be historicized or oth-
erwise recognized with any degree of scholarship or other
forms of cultural attention equivalent to the actual impact
the movement has had on subsequent developments in
American artistic practice. Rather than expand this argu-
ment, I would like to address a few instances of cultural
attention that have been paid to the feminist art of the sev-
enties in order to situate the problem of lesbian erasure
within the context of contemporary art history, as articulat-
ed through a few recent productions.
As of 1996, there have been only two museum exhi-
bitions organized in the United States that distinctly fea-
tured (and named as such) works produced from the
feminist art movement of the 1970s: Division of Labor:
"Women's Work" in Contemporary Art (1995), which was
organized by the Bronx Museum and traveled to the Muse-
um of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Sexual Politics:
Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" in Feminist Art History
(1996), organized by the Armand Hammer Museum at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Both of these exhibi -
tions refrained from demarcating the artistic energy of the
1970s as an art movement and included art from the 1980s
and 1990s, a curatorial decision that minimizes the gener-
ative position of the seventies. Stretching the influence of
feminism across three decades avoids announcing the first
decade as the movement it was and therefore reduces fem-
inist art to a mere tendency. At the same time, however, the
exhibitions inadvertently acknowledged the formative
position of the seventies on subsequent visual products by
the simple fact that the earliest dates on the exhibition
checklists were of works from the late 1960s and the

17. 1970s. The Sexual Politics exhibition charted a more com-
plicated and hotly contested art historical trajectory by sit-
uating dozens of women artists from the seventies, eighties,
and nineties around one late-seventies feminist center-
piece: Chicago's Dinner Party (1979). The curatorial and
physical centrality allotted Chicago forced more than a few
seventies feminists to refuse to participate in the exhibition.8
Both Division of Labor and Sexual Politics overly het-
erosexualized the feminist art movement of the 1970s
through the omission and miscontextualization of art made
by and about lesbians. The eclipse of lesbianism appears
in each of the exhibition titles. "Division of Labor" imme-
diately suggests the heterosexualized division under which
women are cast as men's domestic servants, housekeepers,
and wives-a connotation corroborated by a curatorial
emphasis on art that interacts with the tradition of domes-
tic crafts. By including 1980s and 1990s craft-inspired art
by men, Division of Labor struck a curatorial position pro-
pounding a male-female dialogue, while making no
acknowledgment of either the dialogue or the argument
between lesbian and nonlesbian women. Harmony Ham-
mond was the only lesbian included in Division of Labor.
Despite Hammond's public work promoting lesbian visibil-
ity as an artist, a writer, and an educator,9 her exhibited
Floorpieces were discussed in the curator's exhibition essay
exclusively in the context of Minimalism; specifically, as
references to Carl Andre!0l Indeed, as long as historians
and critics insist on examining every artwork in relation-
ship to the art of (more) famous (white) male artists, the
possibilities for understanding lesbian art, indeed all art,
will continue to be greatly curtailed. For the Sexual Poli-
tics exhibition, the heterosexualization of the title is itself a
form of cultural colonization-as Sexual Politics takes its
title from Kate Millett's most famous book, a work that is

18. itself an indictment of heterosexuality. Abetted by the gen-
eral reclamation of the phrase sexual politics into a gener -
ally neutral ("it means something about gender, right?")
rather than heterosexual-critical term, the exhibition dis-
acknowleges both the lesbian authorship and lesbian
implications of the eponymous book.
Indeed, both exhibitions relegate lesbianism and les-
bians to marginal consideration. Although Sexual Politics
includes more lesbian artists (including Tee Corrine,
Nicole Eisenman, and Cheryl Gaulke), the works are left
unelucidated within the exhibition's installation, stranded
in the opaque confines of an idea of so-called difference.
Perhaps most significantly, both exhibitions refuse to
address the critique that seventies lesbian feminism and
its art practitioners posed to both patriarchy and heterosex-
ualized women. The practice of offering just illustration or
description-that is, including usually marginalized art-
works but dropping their context-appears to be one of the
most popular devices to preclude the real implications of
all identity politics. Thus, people make a nod to lesbianism
without acknowledging its persecution, use the word gen-
WINTER 1996
der but forgo discussing sexism, or write the word race
when the real issue is racism.
The only general art historical text on seventies fem-
inist art currently in print, The Power of Feminist Art (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), edited by Norma Broude
and Mary D. Garrard, refers to lesbians by name on just 11
of its 318 pages. All of the direct, but nonetheless fleeting,
references to lesbians are made by the four lesbians

19. (including myself) included among the eighteen contribu-
tors, as well as by one of the book's editors. One of the
book's seventeen essays could and should have been
devoted to lesbianism, given that lesbianism as theory and
practice was among the most divisive, explosive, and radi -
cal issues debated among seventies feminist activists and
artists. The editors, as well as the lesbian and nonlesbian
contributors, are aware of the central role lesbianism
played in the social organizing of seventies feminism
(especially in California, which is the book's primary geo-
graphical focus), given that all of the contributors (exclud-
ing myself) participated in the feminist movement of the
1970s and therefore had direct experience with the trou-
bled cycle of enunciation and repression that framed les-
bian cultural manifestations during that period. But the
different strategies of representation employed by vi sual
artists are incapable of surfacing within historical accounts
that refuse to investigate hegemony beyond the level of
mention, that stay at the level of superficial nods to the
complex histories held and suggested by words like lesbian
(or woman or black). It appears that lesbianism, one of the
most critical engagements of 1970s feminist art and
activism, is still unthinkable, undiscussible, and unpub-
lishable twenty-five years later.
Of course, a central problem for critics, intellectuals,
and historians who have sustained engagements with cul-
tural materials deemed irrelevant and not valuable by the
dominant culture is that our efforts are not easily rewarded
with the resources necessary to conduct our work. We are
expected to do more work-find images and documents
that do not appear in books and sift through archival mate-
rial that has not been catalogued-but we are also expect-
ed to take for granted that we will receive less money to
conduct our work. And frequently when we are given
encouragement to do what we do best and we are even will -

20. ing to accept that the resources we have for our work
amount to little more than the air we breathe and the time
we number among the living-our efforts are still sabo-
taged. There will be no dramatic shift in the circumstances
that constrict lesbian experience and lesbian culture until
the political circumstances that normalize misogyny and
other forces of exploitation are dramatically altered. One of
the most insidious formulations manufactured by the cor-
ruption of identity politics is the Woman or the African
American or the Chicano or the Lesbian invited to present
a culturally marked body for the photo session, the acade-
mic panel, the cover of the college catalogue, and other
staged representations. Our images are used to mask the
reality of our subordination. We know just how much we
are being used when we attempt to speak and no one lis-
tens and when no one bothers to look at or speak of the
work that we have produced.
Notes
1. Lesbian History Group, Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming
Lesbians in Histo-
ry, 1840-1985 (London: Women's Press, 1993), 3.
2. Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
(New York:
Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1982), intro., 1. Although
this example is
now dated by over a decade, it remains a spectacular example of
lesbian erasure
given how otherwise acclaimed The Color Purple was as both a
novel and a film in
the early 1980s.
3. Muriel Rukeyser, foreword to Berenice Abbott/Photographs

21. (New York:
Smithsonian Institution/Tenth Avenue Editions, 1990).
4. The exhibition is documented in the Mus6e d'Art Modere de
la Ville de
Paris's catalogue Claude Cahun Photographe (Paris: Jean Michel
Place, 1995).
See also Francois Leperlier, Claude Cahun, 'ecart et la
mdtamorphose (Paris: Jean
Michel Place, 1992).
5. Marilyn Frye, Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism (Freedom,
Calif.: Crossing
Press, 1992), 53.
6. See Marguerite Yourcenar, Dear Departed: A Memoir, trans.
Maria Louise
Ascher (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991); and Tabitha
Soren, "Ellen's New
Twist on TV," New York Daily News, November 24,1995, USA
Weekend section 4-6.
7. Even just looking at the number of women who "became"
lesbians dur-
ing/within and subsequent to the women's liberation movement
indicates that the
dialogue on lesbianism that occurred within the movement had a
direct effect in
enabling women to identify themselves as lesbians. Although an
oral history of the
movement in the United States would supply considerable
evidence, just a look at
famous women offers an indicator. Consider, for instance, that
Kate Millett, Robin
Morgan, and Adrienne Rich were married and considered
themselves heterosexu-

22. al before the advent of the movement.
In terms of the effect the women's liberation movement has had
on subsequent
possibilities for self-identified lesbians in the United States, I
suggest that the
gains in relative economic status the movement garnered for
women have made it
possible for more members of the next generation to choose to
live sexually and
economically independent from men (especially, if not
exclusively, those of us who
are white, middle classed, and college educated).
8. Some of the seventies feminist artists who were approached
by the curators
and refused to participate in Sexual Politics are Mary Beth
Edelson, Harmony
Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Snyder, and
Nancy Spero.
9. Hammond was on the editorial board for the "Lesbian Art and
Artists" issue
of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, no. 3
(1977). She was also
the curator of A Lesbian Show at 112 Greene Street Workshop
in New York in
1978. For a discussion of a variety of contemporary lesbian art
and artists, see
Hammond's "A Space of Infinite and Pleasurable Possibilities:
Lesbian Self-Rep-
resentation in Visual Art," in New Feminist Criticism, ed.
Joanna Frueh et al. (New
York: HarperCollins, 1994), 97-131.
10. See Lydia Yee, "Division of Labor: 'Women's Work' in

23. Contemporary Art,"
in the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name (New York:
Bronx Museum of
the Arts, 1995), 17.
LAURA COTTINGHAM is the author of lesbians are so chic ...
(London: Cassell, 1996). She is currently working on Not for
Sale, a video history of the feminist art movement.
ART JOURNAL
77
Article Contentsp.72p.73p.74p.75p.76p.77Issue Table of
ContentsArt Journal, Vol. 55, No. 4, We're Here: Gay and
Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History (Winter, 1996), pp. 1-
111Front Matter [pp.1-108]Thank You [p.7]Co-Editor's
StatementReflections on a Name: We're Here: Gay and Lesbian
Presence in Art and Art History [pp.8-10]Things Are Queer
[pp.11-14]Artists' PagesDissolving Categories [pp.16-
19]Making Trouble for Art History: The Queer Case of Girodet
[pp.20-27]Teach Me Today: Finding the Censors in Your Head
and in Your Classroom [pp.28-33]Vermeer, Jane Gallop, and the
Other/Woman [pp.34-41]Warhol's Closet [pp.42-50]Closet Ain't
Nothin' but a Dark and Private Place for...? [pp.51-54]Corporal
Evidence: Representations of Aileen Wuornos [pp.56-61]How
Many Extinctions? [pp.62-63]Imminent Domain: Queer Space in
the Built Environment [pp.64-70]Notes on Lesbian [pp.72-
77]Art History [pp.78-79]Goodbye Lesbian/Gay History, Hello
Queer Sensibility: Meditating on Curatorial Practice [pp.80-
86]ReviewsVirtual (S) Exhibitionism [pp.88-93]The Radical
Classicist [pp.95-97]Whistleriana [pp.99-101]untitled [pp.103-
104]Twentieth-Century Exhibitionism [pp.105-106]Books and
Catalogues Received [pp.109-111]Correction: Resource Guide
[p.111]Back Matter
Homoeroticism in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods -

24. Sheela-na-gig
Sheela-na-gig
Sheela-na-gig is a woman who is in a squatting position
displaying her vulva - a figure found on the walls, and towers
(as well as in museums) in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland,
Wales, and England, similar to grotesques throughout Europe,
to Baubo in the Middle East, and to Kali and other goddess
figures in India and Southeast Asia. Most commonly Sheela-na-
gig is represented as an old, bald woman without breasts and is
located on a church. This may seem to be an odd image to find
on a church, but very common, nonetheless.
Shella na gig on Kilpeck Church, near Hereford England, 12th
century
The form is both overtly sexual and somewhat comical – a kind
of trickster figure. Like the “Venus of Willendorf,” it is unclear
exactly what the figure represents. Some believe she is the
vestige of a female goddess from pagan times who was then
translated into Christian iconography. It is also suggested that
she may symbolize a warning against the sin of lust. Often the
figure was found above a window, so she was also considered a
possible protection against the entry of evil. While most
surviving sheelas are medieval, Irish legend and older carvings
suggest connections to pagan crone goddesses. According to
lore and scholarship, sheelas may also have served as fertility,
birthing, or erotic figures.
In recent years there has been more writing about Sheela-na-
gig, as she has been of great interest to the Great Goddess
Movement and to Feminist Artists and Theologians.
Contemporary feminist artists such as Mary Beth Edelson,
frequently incorporates the form of “Sheela” into their work.
Mary Beth Edelson, Sheela makes no apologies, silkscreen and

25. collage on jute tag, 1978
Early Irish Churches Blatantly Show Female Genitalia
The Christian men in Ireland who were in authority over their
flocks had churches built in order to perform the liturgies and
rituals associated with their sacred duties. And what did the
church authorities place at the entrances to many of their
churches just before and after the time of the Crusades? In full
view of the congregations that attended the various Catholic
Churches then in Ireland, the priests and monks placed a statue
carved out of stone (usually) showing a squatting woman with
her legs apart and the genitalia of the woman held open with her
hands. Such images were widespread in Ireland and each one
was known as a Shiela-Na-Gig (probably meaning, the "Woman
of the Vulva"). This naked woman was prominently displayed
for all the churchgoers at the keystone spot of an arched
doorway leading into the church (or sometimes over a pointed
arch of a window that was also apart of the church).
It may be difficult for us of modern times to believe that such
things happened in a Catholic Christian environment, but the
fact is, they did indeed take place. In the prestigious
"Encyclopedia of Religion," edited by Mercia Eliade and
published by Macmillian Publishing Company for the
University of Chicago, there are references to these Sheila-Na-
Gigs (sometimes spelled Sheelagh-na-gig). Notice what the
encyclopedia tells us about them.
"Aside from the transformative religious mysteries of sacrifice
and initiation, the obvious life-giving and growth-promoting
powers of the vulva and its secretions have given rise to a
widespread use of representations of the female genitalia as
apotropaic devices. The custom of plowing a furrow for magical
protection around a town was practiced all over Europe by
peasants. It was still observed in the twentieth century in
Russia, where villages were thus annually 'purified.' The
practice was exclusively carried out by women, who, while
plowing, called on the moon goddess. A similar apotropaic

26. function seems to have prompted the placing of squatting
female figures prominently exposing their open vulvas on the
key of arches at church entrances in Ireland, Great Britain, and
German Switzerland. In Ireland these figures are called
Sheelagh-na-gigs. Some of these figures represent emaciated old
women. These images are illustrations of myths concerning the
territorial Celtic goddess who was the granter of royalty. When
the goddess wished to test the king-elect, she came to him in the
form of an old hag, soliciting sexual intercourse. If the king-
elect accepted, she transformed herself into a radiantly beautiful
young woman and conferred on him royalty and blessed his
reign. Most such figures were removed from churches in the
nineteenth century.
And a little farther down in the same article:
"A remarkable parallel to the Celtic Sheelagh-na-gig is found in
the Palauan archipelago. The wooden figure of a nude woman,
prominently exposing her vulva by sitting with legs wide apart
and extended to either side of the body, is placed on the eastern
gable of each village's chiefly meeting house. Such figures are
called dilugai. Interestingly, the yoni [the female genitalia] is in
the shape of a cleft downward-pointing triangle. These female
figures protect the villagers' health and ward off all evil spirits
as well. They are constructed by ritual specialists according to
strict rules, which if broken would result in the specialist's as
well as the chiefs death. It is not coincidental that each example
of signs representing the female genitalia used as apotropaic
devices are found on gates. The vulva is the primordial gate, the
mysterious divide between nonlife and life"
(EncyclopediaofReligion, article YONI, Vol.15, p.534).
There is a great deal of information about these Sheila-Na-
Gigs that were found in many places in Ireland (until the
Protestant Reformation when many of them were destroyed by
the reformers) and in various places of Northern Europe within
Christian times (indeed, these images were found in the most
prominent places carved on Catholic Christian churches). They
were even found on Cathedrals (the seat of a bishopric). The

27. highest authorities in the Christian Church allowed them to
exist at the time.
In the famous "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics," edited by
James Hastings, we read the following.
"Nor are such female effigies confined to the pagan natives of
tropical wilds. They were frequently carved on churches in the
Middle Ages. Many have been preserved until recently in
Ireland, as, e.g. on a doorway of Cloyne Cathedral, Co. Cork.
The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin possesses a very good
specimen removed from a church. They are known to Irish
antiquaries by the name Sheila-Na-Gig. Most of them, however,
have now been destroyed" (vol. IX, p.8~7).
Barbara Walker in her book "The Woman’s Dictionary of
Symbols and Sacred Objects," states under the subject Sheila-
Na-Gig:
"Female figures prominently displaying the yoni [female
genitalia] as a vesica piscus [Mandorla] were once common
ornaments of Irish churches built before the sixteenth century.
As a rule the sheila-na-gig was carved into the keystone of a
window or doorway arch. Undoubtedly it was a protective sign
left over from pre-Christian Goddess worship. Figures of the
same type were found throughout Europe as cathedral
decorations, on the capitals of columns, at the ends of ceiling
beams, and so forth. Squatting Goddess figures almost identical
to the Sheila-Na-Gig guarded the doors of temples in India"
(p.104).
It should be recalled that the depiction of these women blatantly
showing their genitalia in the most prominent places of a
Cathedral or church were sanctioned and ordained by the
Christian ecclesiastical authorities with the approval and
approbation of the papacy in Rome (after all, some of them were
found on churches as late as the nineteenth century). A few of
these images approved by the priests and monks are shown
below. These few represent the hundreds that must have existed
on other churches.

28. PLATE VI (Shelah-Na-Gig Monuments)
PLATE VII (VENUS OF THE VANDALS, BRONZE AND
LEAD IMAGES, AND CAPITAL OF A COLUMN)
Many symbols and signs on churches and cathedrals in Europe
were not as blatant as the Sheila-Na-Gigs, but the so-called
benign symbols that the female and male genitalia represented
only the initiated into the "church mysteries" would know what
they meant. Many windows were given various designs that to
the uninitiated looked like pretty decorations to make the
church appear attractive to the eye. Yes, it did that, but the
architects ofTen had much more in mind when they painted (or
constructed) their rose windows or carvings in walls, on
columns, at the top of columns, or at the end of beams. As a
point in fact, at the Church of San Fedele in France there were
discovered some medals dating from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth centuries that had on one side the "benign" symbol in
the form of a cross with other decorations with what the symbol
actually entailed on the reverse side (which was a phallic
symbol). Some signs were "male" and others were "female" and
were identified by the respective genitalia found on the reverse
side. The Plate IX below was taken from the book "A History of
Phallic Worship," by Thomas Wright and published as a reprint
by Dorset Press, 1992.
PLATE IX (ORNAMENTS FROM THE CHURCH OF SAN
FEDELE
So, the next time you want to admire the decorations that are
found in many of our modern churches (who often copied from
early Gothic progenitors), look closely at the various designs of
the crosses in the quatrefoils in the tracery windows. You will
see that some of them are very similar in design (if not
identical) with the medals from the Church of San Fedele shown
above. And too, many churches today have lancet shaped
windows (with their pointed arches) as their basic window
designs. When you know what they actually mean to the
initiated (without the outward ambiguity), you may be shocked

29. at what you find displayed within those "beautiful ornaments of
sacred art, that adorn even the quaint little "churches in the
vale." Notice the medals shown above that depict on the obverse
the female genitalia. The artists idealize the shape of the
external genitalia by making what is called an "almond shaped"
design that is called in symbolic language a Mandorla (which
means "like an almond"). The same shape of genitalia (the
Mandorla) was found in the majority of the Sheila-Na-Gigs that
were carved on the top of doorways (usually at the pinnacle of a
pointed or lancet arch) in the early churches and on some
Cathedrals. This symbol of the Mandorla is a very much used in
Christian art. Most of us have seen it at one time or another, but
most people have not the slightest idea what it signifies. It is a
woman's vulva. The illustration below shows how Barbara G.
Walker in her excellent book "The Woman’s Encyclopedia of
Myths and Secrets" describes this well known symbol called the
Mandorla.
Vesica piscis
Mandorla "Almond," the pointed-oval sign of the yoni, used in
Oriental art to signify the divine female genital; also called
vesic~ piscis, the Vessel of the Fish. Almonds were holy
symbols because of their female, yonic connotations. Almonds
had the power of virgin motherhood, as shown by the myth of
Nana, who conceived the god Attis with her own almond.' The
candlestick of the Jews' tabernacle of the Ark was decorated
with almonds for their fertility magic (Exodus 25:33-34).
Christian art similarly used the mandorla as a flame for figures
of God, Jesus, and saints, because the artists forgot what it
formerly meant. I. Frazer, G.B., 403,
You will often see Mary and/or the supposed "Jesus" within a
glorified Mandorla symbol. Note the following examples
Now note this. If you will cut the Mandorla in half; you will see
that the two sections (if turned upward) resemble the famous
pointed arch that we see in profusion in all of Gothic
architecture. It is also the most used form for windows (such as

30. lancet windows) that we see in churches today. In fact, it is
common for us, when we see windows or doorways that have
the pointed arch (which is the top part of the Mandorla sign) to
say that is ecclesiastical or church-type of architecture. Even
the little "church in the dale" is most often shown with
doorways and windows with the pointed type of arch. As said
before, this is simply a modified Mandorla symbol and it
represents the external female genitalia.
This fact can be shown in a most remarkable way once we
understand the medieval attitude toward rendering the Christian
Church into the shape of a stone, wooden and metal building.
This especially applies to that architectural frame of mind
which used Gothic motifs to enshroud the clear meanings of
their parts of a church with symbolic teachings that only the
initiated would understand. We can see how the female genitalia
(as well as the male) were used extensively in various ways to
show that the "Church" was indeed a reckoned as a woman that
would bear children for God and Christ who were in heaven.
And though in some areas (and even on some Cathedrals) the
Sheila-Na-Gigs were placed in full and blatant display of the
female genitalia (to remind people they were going "inside" the
Woman, the Church, in order to find "life" and regeneration), in
most cases the architects used the esoteric motifs with
ambiguous themes or displays that the uninitiated would not
understand.
- Excerpts from Anatomy of an Early Christian Church by
Ernest L. Martin, Ph.D., 1998
Running head: THE PRINCE 1
PRINCE 7

31. “The Prince” and the Florentine Republic
Name
Date
“The Prince” and the Florentine Republic
In the book The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli addresses the
two types of government that exist concerning leadership.
These include the principalities like the hereditary in which the
leadership flows through the family tree as the family has been
established for long. In this case, it is the leadership through
kings(Machiavelli, 2008). The second type of government is
with regard to republics, whereby people get to choose the
leaders they want. Machiavelli focuses more on hereditary, but
he addresses the various aspects of the principalities and
republics by addressing the various historical events with regard
to leadership. This paper will take a look at the topic of The
Florentine Republic and how it relates to The Prince, how the
issue gets addressed by Machiavelli, and the contribution of the
text in shaping the views of Machiavelli about government.
The Prince and the Florentine Republic

32. The Prince is a book that entails the various types of leadership,
which enables one to understand the different government
forms. The government forms that Machiavelli addresses
include the two principalities, which are either new that have
just been created or the hereditary ones that have been
established over time and the republics (Machiavelli, 2008). In
addressing the concept of innate leadership and how it works,
Machiavelli explains the various factors that make it
challenging and almost impossible for countries that have a
republic to be conquered. This is relevant to this topic because
it addresses the aspects of how Florence, as a kingdom, became
a republic and later became a defeated as their princes fled
(Clarke, 2018). This is in agreement with Machiavelli’s
sentiments in his book that provides that it is much easier for a
state that gets ruled under the hereditary principality to be
conquered rather than a country that is a republic. The book
and the topic relate to each other in the sense that they both
address the various forms of government and their specific
aspects in terms of their characteristics concerning how they
operate and how the people subject to them respond in case of
invasion.
How people respond to the country that has invaded them is
highly dependent on the current type of government they have.
In a republic, people tend to be loyal because they used to live
freely, and for this reason, it will be challenging for a country
that invaded them to acquire their loyalty as they will remain
true to their republic government and they will also devise ways
to fight for their republic. On the other hand, it tends to be
much easier for a state that has a hereditary government to be
conquered by democracy because the people will enjoy a kind of
freedom that lets them choose their leaders rather than a
hierarchy that is dominated by dictatorial like leadership in the
sense that the people have to do what the Prince directs. These
topics, therefore, relate as while Machiavelli talks about how
the different government function, the topic on the Florentine
Republic discusses how the republic of Florence came to

33. become a republic.
How the topic gets addressed by Machiavelli
The primary theme of the topic is Florence as a republic.
Machiavelli, therefore, addresses the various aspects as to how
the country became a republic and the multiple elements that
may have influenced that. Machiavelli addresses the elements
regarding the Florentine democracy by providing advice and his
views on how the problems Florence faces should have been
handled. For instance, he states that the Florence would have
stood at the discretion of Giovanni Auto’s discretion if he had
decided to conquer Naples for the purpose of proving his
fidelity. If the man that had been appointed as captain, Paolo
Vitelli by the Florentines and had defeated Pisa, the Florentines
would have been right in keeping him, and they would have to
obey him if he had become their enemies’ soldier. This is a
clear indication that the views from the book get shaped by the
actual events that took place in Florence.
Machiavelli views his writings regarding the Florentine
Histories, as a theme, as a party division that is remarkable in
the city that kept Florence city corrupt and weak (Maher, 2017).
He further adds that the most democratic government and also
the most short-lived government of the city got formed as a
result of the rebellion of the lower classes. The discussion and
provisions from the history of Florentine clearly indicate that
despite having become a republic, Florentine did not manage to
maintain its democracy as it gets conquered later by the
barbarians. The weak state of the country made it possible for it
to be invaded easily. While working with Florence's Great
council, Machiavelli was of the opinion that it was necessary
for Florence to establish a militia for citizens, and get rid of the
mercenaries. Machiavelli’s main focus of attention was the
condition in which Italy was in, in which it had been taken over
by Barbarians. He went further to challenge the various princes
like Medici to be more aggressive in fighting for the liberation
of Italy. His opinion about the republic of Florence was that it
had a weak system with the princes not being able to stand up

34. against the barbarians that had invaded the country is what
contributed to the ease of the barbarians to invade them.
Further arguments that Machiavelli presents in his work
regarding the Florentine republic was the argument that a
prince’s influence, even if he is a virtuous prince could not be
able to last long and as such, he was of the opinion that the
most superior government form was the one in which all people
were born free. He further added that such a good republic
would be comprised of a religion that is strong, laws that are
good, a citizen army, and punishments that are severe for
criminals. Machiavelli was an Italian Patriot whose writing was
aimed at sparking Italy’s liberation from occupation by
foreigners. In his book, Machiavelli provides advice to the
leaders on the specific qualities they are supposed to have, and
it becomes evident that his message was directed towards the
princes who, instead of defending their people against the
enemy, they decide to flee and leave the people alone. This is
clearly not the character of a good leader as their fleeing made
it easier for the barbarians to take over the country as there was
no one to oppose them.
The topic and Machiavelli’s views regarding government
The topic, Florentine republic helps shape the views by
Machiavelli about government in several ways, some of which
have been touched on in the discussion. First, the topic is a
reflection of Machiavelli's efforts in fighting for the restoration
of Italy from the hands of the barbarians. By being a republic, it
meant that the citizens could exercise free will, and they would
get born free. The liberty of the people would be realized by
making Florence a republic; the freedom of people would be
restored. The writings by Machiavelli mainly themed with the
concepts of a republic state in which power gets given to the
people who get to make a decision and choose the kind of leader
that they want. A democratic republic, according to
Machiavelli, is one in which the people get to live freely and
influence the elements of decision making in the republic
country.

35. The Florentine republic topic helped shape the views by
Machiavelli regarding government in the sense that it provided
a platform through which the people could be able to choose
leaders that had the specific virtues that the people desired. The
people had the liberty to take a given length of time, observe
the leaders that they wanted, and get them into holding the
leadership positions in which they got elected by the
representatives of the people. This shaped the views by
Machiavelli because, in The Prince, he held the opinion that the
Prince should be a virtuous man (Menaldo, 2018). He describes
this as the message from history that is the most important. His
description of such men was that men who are worthy of
leadership are those who are able to stand on their own, and
place reliance on their armies rather than fortune or
mercenaries. Cesare Borgia was the one man Machiavelli saw to
have come close to being a virtuous man, and his fight for
power became a significant inspiration for Machiavelli in
writing his book, The Prince. Therefore, the Florentine republic
through Borgia played an essential role in shaping the
government views Machiavelli had.
The events that took place in the Florentine republic in
terms of being taken over by barbarians shaped the views of
Machiavelli in the sense that he was able to address the issue of
the Princes who failed to fight for their country and fled wars.
This inspired him to write about the aspects of good leadership,
and thus, he referred to The Prince as the book of advice to
leaders (Goodman, 2017). The book did not dwell on the ideals
that were Christian, like most books of that time. His view was
based on the idea that a prince needs to learn to be good first
for him to be able to hold and take power. The reason for this
was that most of the other people are not good, and as such, it
was necessary that a true leader be better than the other people.
This view was influenced by the need for Machiavelli to provide
advice for those princes who had fled the country at the sign of
war, leaving their people when they should have been the ones
fighting for them.

36. The relationship between the topic, The Florentine
Republic, and the book by Machiavelli, The Prince, is so close
in the sense that the various aspects of leadership get discussed
in each text. For instance, while the topic addresses the type of
leadership that was in Italy from the principalities to the
republic and later being conquered by the barbarians,
Machiavelli, in his book explains the different kinds of
government and writes his book with inspiration from some of
the events that took place in Florence. Machiavelli addresses
the topic by establishing possible solutions and advice through
the book.
References
Clarke, M. T. (2018). Machiavelli's Florentine Republic.
Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, R. (2017). The Advisor: Counsel, Concealment, and

37. Machiavelli's Voice. Redescriptions: Political Thought,
Conceptual History, and Feminist Theory, 20(2), 200-223.
Machiavelli, N. (2008). The prince. Hackett Publishing.
Maher, A. (2017). The power of “wealth, nobility and men:”
Inequality and corruption in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.
European Journal of Political Theory, 1474885117730673.
Menaldo, M. A. (2018). Leadership and the virtue of deception
in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. In Leadership and the
Unmasking of Authenticity. Edward Elgar Publishing.