Vice-Versa. Regard sur les figures couchées dans les couvercles des forzieri

Daniel Arasse has highlighted the lying female nude as a pictorial genre born during the Renaissance by analysing the spatial arrangements, in particular, of Titian’s Venus of Urbino. The marriage chests, (cassoni or forzieri) painted in the background of the painting, and the nudes depicted on their lids, play an essential role in this composition. To take the study of the emergence of the lying nude further, this article proposes examining the issues raised by the designs of the chests themselves and the structure of the paradoxical position of the nudes placed there, oscillating between repose and activity. He shows the Greco-Roman sleeping river gods and nymphs, like the Etruscan funeral monuments, may well have influenced this motif and posture – which, doubtless, were in turn put to use in fountains and openly erotic lying nudes