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'Acts, Orientations and the Sodomites of San Gimignano'

Context and contribution: Sex Acts opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. While contributors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, the volume foregrounds the visual culture specifically, ranging from representations of sex and sexualized bodies to material objects associated with sexual activities. An Italian edition, Sesso nel Rinascimento, was published in 2009.

Research imperatives and process: Mills’ essay revolves around the question of orientations: what it means for sexuality to be experienced as orientated; why visual images contribute to that process; and how the spatial and temporal dimensions of orientation might be harnessed as a means of understanding sexual imagery in historical contexts. Focusing on a little-discussed scene from the Last Judgement fresco in the Collegiata, San Gimignano, which depicts, among a group of infernal sinners guilty of the sin of lussuria, a male couple apparently being chastised for sodomy, the essay also draws on recent theorizations of orientation in queer and gender theory.