“Firm Outlines and Hard Muscles Immortalised”: Ancient Statuary and E.P. Warren’s “Uranian Ideal”
This chapter examines the role of ancient sculpture in the homoerotic ideals and real-life relationships of collector Edward Perry Warren in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The classical male nude in particular facilitated for Warren the establishment of models of virile masculinity and age-differentiated male-male attachments, as well as their wider dissemination through the provision of material to international museums. He saw certain styles of ancient art as embodying specific ancient values which could challenge contemporary heteronormativity, but also associations between homosexuality, effeminacy and aestheticism, and could confront emerging political ideas around gender equality.