Resumen de Visulaity, morality, and same-sex desire: The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist in early Netherlandish art

Andrea G. Pearson

• The theme of 'The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist Embracing and Kissing" was one of the most successful iconographic types in early modern Netherlandish painting, yet the utility of the imagery remains understudied. Visual and textual evidence aligns to reveal a pictorial language in which spiritual desire was expressed and meant to be inflamed by carnal desire. Yet spectators could also have drawn from a broad set of contingent visual resources to interpret the imagery as a condemnation of same-sex carnal practice. This period in fact coincided with new legislation in Antwerp that deepened the criminalization of sodomy and other non-procreative sexual acts. Read differently, the imagery suggests a compassionate view about same-sex relationship and, by extensión, the sorts of sexual activities that defined that preference. This investigative path broadens the methodological landscape in a field in which visuality and same-sex desire remain underexplored.