Carlos Enríquez, one of the foremost pioneers of Cuban modern art, executed a series of twelve pen drawings (each 22 x 14¾ in.) illustrating Pietro Aretino's Sonetti Lussuriosi (also known as Aretino's Postures or Lust Sonnets), a foundational 16th-century work of literary erotica originally written to accompany an explicit series by Giulio Romano titled I Modi. The drawings are undated, but art historian Juan A. Martínez (Miami, 2010) dates them stylistically to the late 1930s or early 1940s, identifying this as one of three book-illustration projects undertaken by Enríquez and the only one that never reached publication — the explicit subject matter would have been deemed obscene in Havana, or virtually any city in the Americas, at the time. Departing from Aretino's classical model, Enríquez assigned his subjects the identities of real Renaissance personalities rendered in the style of the artists who historically portrayed them — Pietro Aretino after Botticelli, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia after Giorgione, Charles V after Titian, among others — a body of work Martínez notes is distinct within Enríquez's erotic oeuvre for its sustained single-theme conception and prominent, literal treatment of the male nude. Each work is accompanied by a book produced by Pan American Art Projects, issued in a limited edition.