2023-09-07 14:26:15
A theme for fetishists. What is the most beautiful part of the human body? In one of the 22 splendid essays of Illustrated atlas of the human body (Intellectual key), the writer Pablo Maurette does not address that question, but he makes a statement somewhat related to it. He says, “There is no part of the body more slender than a slender calf.” The description of it is very precise and at first has a poetic tone: “The slender calf is shaped like an inverted drop, a drop that has become fat enough to fall from the peak of the shin due to the gravity of its weight.” The muscle that gives it its shape is the gastrocnemius (the calves), fleshy and convex. “Gatrocnemius” comes from Greek and means “belly of the leg.”
“Illustrated Atlas of the Human Body”, by Pablo Maurette (Intellectual Key; $14,900)
Maurette’s interest in calves led him to admire their different types in sculptures and paintings; for example, in the David, by Michelangelo; in it Apollo, by Bernini; and in the crucified christ, by Donatello; but also in human beings who are the demigods of this era, the footballers; and, by the way, in Maradona and Messi. He studied the photos of the former’s legs with the attention of a collector who doesn’t want to be scammed by forgers or Photoshop techniques. He analyzed them during rest sessions or massages, naked. In addition, Maurette jogs to stay in shape and, in hopes of carving slender calves. One afternoon, while jogging in shorts through Rome, he ran into his mother-in-law, who exclaimed to her son-in-law’s ecstasy: “Soccerer’s calves!” The writer said to himself: “I am done.”
That anecdote made me think of a story from my own family. My father was a great athlete and, by the way, he had the ideal twins; My mother, who did not play any sport, had lived in the countryside as a child and had learned to walk and jump on stilts not only to entertain herself but to avoid the mud on rainy days. In adolescence, the stilts also developed in her the desired slenderness of her legs, as described by Maurette. She was an early nymphet, one of those that enthused the painter Balthus, when one of her precocious suitors told her the first time he saw her in high-heeled shoes: “What legs!” And one of his rivals completed the phrase with sarcasm: “For a soccer player!” My mother started crying. Over time, she understood that that was one of her attractions.
The calves made Gabriel Iturri (1860-1905), a young middle-class man from Tucumán, who emigrated as an adventurer to Paris in the Belle Époque, quickly become one of the secret keys that opened the doors of high society. . Duchesses, princesses, millionaires and geniuses surrounded him, among them Marcel Proust. Key to the mystery: the rich and aristocratic Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, a poet of mediocre quality, but who was the arbiter of Parisian elegance, had succumbed to Iturri’s calves, and not only to them, but also to his kindness. ; He defined himself with vain lucidity: “I am the sovereign of transitory things.” He was the model for Proust’s Baron de Charlus. Such was the count’s fascination with the legs of Iturri (who became D’Yturri), that Giovanni Boldini, the Ferrara painter of international high society, made a portrait of the good Gabriel for the count, in which the secretary of this one with cycling clothing that highlighted his calves. Cycling had allowed the man from Tucumán to perfect his calves in Paris. There is a portrait of Iturri, seated half-length, head turned towards the viewer, in the Musée d’Orsay, by Antonio de la Gandara.
The calves make way when walking.
Conocé The Trust Project
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