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A puer mingēns (; : puerī mingentēs ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a prepubescent boy in the act of urinating, either actual or simulated. The puer mingens could represent anything from whimsy and boyish innocence to erotic symbols of virility and masculine bravado.
In Latin, verbs for urinating like mingere were frequently employed in the sense of "to ejaculate".Adams, J. N. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. This connotation was preserved in various descendants of Latin, including Italian with such words as pisciare. On account of this, the urine emitted from the penis of the puer mingens can be interpreted symbolically as semen; and pueri mingentes are frequently found in works auguring fertility and fecundity. Lorenzo Lotto's Venus and Cupid is an example.
In several languages, such as Italian, French, and English, "to make water" was a euphemism for urinating. In allusion to this, one can find depictions of a puer mingens "making water" in works such as Michelangelo's Children's Bacchanal, or in church whose waterspouts are positioned in front of naked boys' groins (thereby giving the illusion that their urine has been transformed into water). Pueri mingentes were frequently incorporated as fully functioning statues whose pipes shot forth streams of water out of the statues' penises.Coonin, A. Victor. The Spirit of Water: Reconsidering the Putto Mictans Sculpture in Renaissance Florence. Italica Press, New York, 2013. One of the most famous examples of this is Manneken Pis in Brussels.
The puer mingens was revived during the Renaissance.Lavin, M. Art of the Misbegotten: Physicality and the Divine in Renaissance Images. Donatello, who paved the way in the reinvention of the larger motif of the putto in sculpture, depicted one of the earliest Renaissance examples of a puer mingens on the base of his Judith and Holofernes statue. From its revival in 15th-century Florence, the artistic motif of urinating boys spread throughout the rest of Europe, reaching its height of popularity during the late Renaissance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before gradually receding in popularity.
Owing to the abovementioned associations with fertility, pueri mingentes are found on deschi da parto – trays given to pregnant women and those who had recently given birth in order to betoken and celebrate the healthy birth of male offspring. Paintings intended as wedding gifts, such as Lorenzo Lotto's Venus and Cupid, might also feature urinating boys.
The puer mingens was prominently incorporated into fountains that would shoot water out of the statue's penis. Although this artistic motif is Roman in origin, there is scant attestation of working fountains incorporating pueri mingentes in Roman times; the Romans did, however, have functional statues portraying the adult Priapus urinating, which may have inspired the Renaissance development of statues of urinating boys. In addition to public spaces, such as Manneken Pis's location in central Brussels, functional fountains also graced many private sixteenth- and seventeenth-century gardens across Europe.
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