The Renaissance, as we know, was obsessed with the body. It has even been said that the period that turned its back on the “Dark Ages” did so by discovering, and more importantly displaying, in painting, in sculpture and in literature, the body that, freed from its vestimentary fetters, took its place (as Ronsard put it) “net, libre et nu” as the privileged symbol of human perfectibility. This vision, an exultation, is the Utopian promise of a body that exists only for the eye to embrace, to encompass, to penetrate and to possess. At the same time, it must be said that this vision of the body, that the body exposed, caressed by the eye of the beholder, responds to a new, or at least, a newly invested desire, the desire to see. Seeing, that is, the subjective incorporation of the world, becomes a metaphor for knowing that world, the privileged mode for seizing exterior reality and making it a part of the self.