Beenstudies 1585 - 1642

Guido Reni sketched these “Beenstudies” with red chalk. The sketch resides at the Rijksmuseum, and its cultural value exists within the history of Western art education. In Reni’s time, the academies of Italy and wider Europe standardized the teaching of drawing. Students drew from antique casts, prints, and, most importantly, the live nude model. The human body became an object of intense study and idealization, yet access to it was socially stratified. While male artists could freely study male nudes, access to the female nude was often restricted, reflecting patriarchal norms. This study reveals a practice that produced a canon of beauty which had the effect of normalizing some bodies while excluding others from representation. To understand the politics of images like this, we must look to the social and institutional structures that produced them. We can consult archival records, pedagogical texts, and critical analyses to better understand the social life of art.