Disir
Platinum Member
- Sep 30, 2011
- 28,003
- 9,608
- 910
Early in the eighteenth century, visitors to the Tower of London could gaze upon a painted wooden statue of Henry VIII, the English king who’d died some two hundred years before. Royally robed, sceptre in hand, the likeness befitted Henry’s reputation for extravagance, right down to its lascivious secret mechanism: “If you press a spot on the floor with your feet,” one observer wrote, “you will see something surprising with regard to this figure, but I will not say more.” I will: it was the king’s codpiece, sallying forth in full regalia.
Henry VIII remains the poster boy for codpieces, those profane protuberances that drew eyes crotchward in the sixteenth century. A suit of the king’s armor, boasting a bulbous codpiece weighing more than two and a half pounds, is still on display at the Tower; women used to stick pins in its sumptuous red-velvet lining to ward off barrenness. And who could blame them? Sure, Henry sired notoriously few healthy children, but, in a famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, he exudes the lusty mystery of a wellborn stud, his codpiece swollen with the stuff of life. He and his appendage feature prominently in “Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History of the Codpiece in Art,” by the English critic Michael Glover. “Has heaven ever before conjured so broad a pair of shoulders?” Glover writes, of Henry’s portrait. “Do you know of any other monarch who is as wide as he is long?”
www.newyorker.com
Hey, look--I didn't want to know any of that.
Henry VIII remains the poster boy for codpieces, those profane protuberances that drew eyes crotchward in the sixteenth century. A suit of the king’s armor, boasting a bulbous codpiece weighing more than two and a half pounds, is still on display at the Tower; women used to stick pins in its sumptuous red-velvet lining to ward off barrenness. And who could blame them? Sure, Henry sired notoriously few healthy children, but, in a famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, he exudes the lusty mystery of a wellborn stud, his codpiece swollen with the stuff of life. He and his appendage feature prominently in “Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History of the Codpiece in Art,” by the English critic Michael Glover. “Has heaven ever before conjured so broad a pair of shoulders?” Glover writes, of Henry’s portrait. “Do you know of any other monarch who is as wide as he is long?”
A Brief History of the Codpiece, the Personal Protection for Renaissance Equipment
“Thrust,” by the English art critic Michael Glover, examines the peculiar protuberances that drew eyes crotchward in the sixteenth century.
Hey, look--I didn't want to know any of that.
