ABSTRACT

Cranach’s Venus gazes coyly out at us, her pale limbs gleaming against the plain black background, her feet delicately balanced on the stony, moon-like ground (see Figure 5.1). Pure pin-up, she made the perfect come-hither poster for the recent Cranach Exhibition in London. And still she has the power to shock: the posters were nearly deemed too explicit to show on the London Underground.1