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first exhibition of those Scatole contemplative e feticci personali was held in the Galleria dell'Obelisco in Rome; the second was in the Galleria d'Arte Contemporanea in Florence. The scathing reception given to the Florentine exhibition and Rauschenberg's response are well-known, and are recorded by the artist himself in the monumental Autobiography of 1968 21. 
Despite this unsympathetic, first experience of Florence, Reauschenberg appears to have formed a long-standing attachment to the city. Evidence of this was provided recently by the exhibition of Rauschenberg's photographs at the Forte di Belvedere in the summer of 1982, and by the presence of an impression of Rauschenberg's highly personal Booster of 1967, donated by the artist, in a recent exhibition held at the Uffizi, Autoritratti del Novecento 22. Certainly, Rauschenberg acknowledged the profound impact that Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi made upon him during a subsequent trip to Florence in 1961, when he stated that it <>23. Given this context, it is reasonable to relate Odalisque to a variety of works of art that Rauschenberg must have seen in Rome and Florence in 1953. 
The transition from Odalisque to obelisk is a relatively easy one to make, and even if Rauschenberg intended no reference to his Roman gallery by the title of his combine, the verbal homophony enables us to recognize the architectural and sculptural identity of the post or newel. It may bring to mind a phallus, but surely it is also an inverted obelisk. Some confirmation of this idea is provided by the last frame of the comic strip Beyond Mars, on the left side of the box (figs. 2, 5), in which a huge, obelisk-like structure is shown toppling to the ground with a rending CRUNCH!. Significantly, the soundboard of the harp echoes the line of the this building, while the pillar tilts precariously to the left, suggesting an unstable triumphal column or the Campanile at Pisa. Obelisks and free-standing columns often were decorated with sculpture in antiquity and during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and it may not be too fanciful to see Rauschenberg's combine as the modern counterpart to such constructions. Gianlorenzo Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk and Four Rivers Fountain come to mind, and one wonders if the rooster might be a profane counterpart to the Pamphili dove 24. 
Pillows appear frequently in Renaissance paintings depicting Venus. Usually they cushion Venus herself, 

Fig. 10 Botticelli, Venus and Mars. National Gallery, London 

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Fig. 11 Donatello, Judith and Holofernes. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Fig. 12 Cellini, Perseus and Medusa. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

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