That Phaeton has some respectable nuts, too.

A while back I posted a whole tirade about the glory of my very favorite part of the male body: the ballback. I still stand by that and I maintain that it’s one of the most beautiful and vulnerable and erotic (man, that word suuucks), and overlooked regions. Everybody wants to show their bhole without taking into account how totally beautiful everything right below that is!

And it turns out even Renaissance painters knew that, too! I stumbled upon this zoomed entry in a massive Italian fresco by Mannerist painter Domenico Ricco early this morning and knew I had to share:

I mean – that’s some hot ballback right there. Woof.

Ricco uses the giant ceiling fresco in the Palazzo Chiericati to depict the fall of Phaeton from his stolen sun chariot (if you’re unfamiliar with the myth, you can check it out here), and you can see, in context, that this work also features some serious horse ballback, too:

It’s a glorious single moment of action, wherein Phaeton is shown tumbling from his purloined chariot. As the chariot itself tips backwards, inside the largest central panel, (just before the sun carried within the chariot crashed into the earth and burned everything up, creating Africa’s deserts. Just like science always told you), all Phaeton’s skirts have blown up, showing off that sweet muscle butt and those luxurious Italian balls:

There are a few art history writers I’ve found who have incorrectly noted that this is a depiction of Apollo and Diana, and that the “oversized” testicles shown here are meant to be a comedic nod to the Chiericati family. To those people I say: