The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- 'Good Luck With the Syphilis!' -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 19)

The current best guess by academics is that the Duke of Urbino had his mother buy the painting to help stoke the passions of his fourteen-year-old bride.

And what makes Urbino's Venus truly erotic is her 'attitude' in the modern sense of the term.

Titian's Venetian mentor had also dared to depict Venus with her hand betwixt her legs.

But in that earlier work, the naked goddess appeared to be sleeping.

Giorgione's Venus

When Titian copied the pose, he painted his Venus with her eyes wide open, giving the viewer 'bedroom eyes.'

In Twain's own time, the painter Manet had shocked tout le monde by borrowing Titian's Venus and recasting her as Olympia: a courtesan lying naked in heels, staring dead-eyed at the spectator with her hand clamped firmly over her moneymaker.

Manet's Olympia

And from the Renaissance love goddess to the high-class French hooker, it's just a short slide down the culture curve to the lowbrow porn of today, when women masturbating into the camera are never more than a few clicks away.

Rather than buying a masterpiece, today's urban Urbinos can gift their partners a DVD starring a woman called Venus in She Squirts #4!

But what I've really come to see are the consequences of all this venereal veneration.

If Venice is Italy's tourist stop for the Age of Decadence, then Florence represents the 'respectable' Renaissance, with more art than space to display it.

In a café, Lena and I meet a nice American couple who've come over to visit their daughter during her semester abroad.

The three of them are dutifully huddled over their guidebooks, planning how to beat the queues at all the must-see museums, when they ask us where we're headed.

'He wants to see some sculptures of syphilis,' Lena tells them.

Cue three quizzical looks—four, if you count my treacherous companion.

I try to explain, but not very convincingly, since I don't know what to expect myself. Every time I've mentioned it to a Florentine or a foreigner, I get the same reaction: you want to go where?

From what I've read, La Specola—part of the Natural History Museum—houses the world's biggest collection of anatomical wax models, including teaching specimens for nasty Olde Worlde diseases like syphilis.

When Napoleon visited, he was so impressed he ordered a complete set of duplicates for doctors in Paris to save them the trouble of experimenting on criminals.

'Soooo—the syphilis! Good luck with that!' the mother says brightly, before shooting Lena a sympathetic look.