of startlingly sexually explicit Latin poems in 1425-26, there was an outcry from moralists. Effigies of [Antonio] Beccadelli were burned in Bologna and Milan. Pope Eugenius IV threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading The Hermaphrodite. The work is honey to a decadent sensibility. In the 19th century, one of Beccadelli's biggest fans was Leonard Smithers, up-market pornographer and publisher of Aubrey Beardsley and OscarWilde. These poems are vivid and raunchy. If there is a tendency to associate the Italian Renaissance only with high culture, then Beccadelli reminds you that Renaissance thinkers were all too familiar with the gutter.from The Australian: What lies beneath
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