Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, stylish males sported a codpiece. In the beginning a garment designed to give protection to and enhance the proverbial “Willy” (particularly when males wore tights), the codpiece morphed into one thing else–an indication of virility, “a bulging and absurd illustration of masculinity itself.” The codpiece featured prominently in artwork by way of masters reminiscent of Titian, Giorgione, Bruegel and Holbein. Above, Evan Puschak (aka the Nerdwriter) introduces you to Holbein’s well-known portrait of Henry VIII, “the poster boy for codpieces.”

For a deeper dive into the topic, you’ll learn the New Yorker piece “A Transient Historical past of the Codpiece, the Non-public Coverage for Renaissance Apparatus.” And to move nonetheless deeper, see Michael Glover’s complete e-book devoted to the topic, Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial Historical past of the Codpiece in Artwork.

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