Perhaps it’s because Burger King wasn’t a thing back then, but in Michelangelo’s historical depictions of man, everybody looked as if it would have a very fire bod. In his sculptures and illustrations, a bloke’s pectoral muscles, topped with tweakable nipples, protrude out over a wash-rack torso; their knife-sharp V-lines pointing down towards to their bits.
It’s a picture that has, for therefore long, dominated Western culture’s perception of archetypal masculinity and male beauty: the final word, almost unattainable look. And yet some 500 years on, we’re still obsessing over it. Now though, it manifests less within the art world – where frailer frames usually tend to be fetishised – and more on our TV screens every summer, as we tune in...
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