itself or finds satisfaction.
Items long hidden in the vaults of public museums and galleries of private collectors can be seen in this book. Many of these pictures and objects were forbidden in a western society which was less open to sexuality and anything associated with it. So they grant us a rare and therefore more fascinating glimpse of what is part and parcel of human nature.
Pictures of the pleasures of the flesh, in this book, promise a feast for the eyes, albeit a distanced pleasure. Yet, is not the essence of eroticism that it should be just beyond reach?
Aspects of the cultural history of humankind can help to extend the limits of tolerance by helping to expand the viewer’s opinion. They can liberate minds from clichés, which may occupy our fantasies and imagination today, but hopefully not after this book has been read.
From Prehistory and Primitive Forms to Antiquity and the Perfection of the Body
1. Anonymous, The Venus of Willendorf, 30,000–25,000 B. C. E. Limestone with red polychromy, h: 11.1 cm. Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna (Austria).
Art has dealt with sexuality since its prehistoric beginnings. Though their purpose remains obscure, small Palaeolithic sculptures of women make up some of the earliest evidence of human existence, such as the so-called Venus of Laussel, whose stylised body with exaggerated hips and breasts have led to interpretations as a fertility figure and to her being named after the goddess of love. Much later on, the Minoan civilisation of ancient Crete created similar figures including tantalising statuettes such as the Snake Goddess. While more naturalistic than her prehistoric counterpart, the figure’s feminine attributes were still emphasised. Like her predecessors, the Snake Goddess’s function is unknown – even her identity as a goddess is uncertain.
Succeeding the Minoans in the Mediterranean, the Ancient Greeks developed a virtual cult of the body, particularly the male body. Their admiration of athletic prowess was reflected in their many idealised representations of nude young men. In the Archaic period life-size nude marble statues called kouroi marked the graves of youthful warriors. Polykleitos’ later sculpture, Doryphoros, based on his mathematical set of ideal proportions rather than actual bodies, showed the evolution of such figures into purely aesthetic expressions.
Although Ancient writers discussed many famous Greek paintings, no actual works have survived. Decorated ceramics, offering a wealth of erotic subjects and information on the culture that created them, are the primary surviving form of two-dimensional art from the time. The Greek practice of pederasty, in which an older man attached himself to a beautiful youth as a form of mentorship, was often depicted on vases, such as those by the Triptolemus Painter and the Brygos Painter. Patriarchal Greek society had little room for female sexual agency; females in Greek erotic scenes were usually prostitutes or deities. The beauty of Praxiteles’ fourth century B. C. Aphrodite of Knidos, the most famous sculpture of classical Antiquity, became a tourist attraction for the island and, according to Pliny, won the love of a man who attempted intercourse with it.
Drama and emotion characterised the Hellenistic phase of Greek art, as in the highly sensuous Barberini Faun. Part goat, his unfiltered sexuality and drunken allegiance to Dionysos highlight his animal nature. The famous Vénus de Milo was a graceful representation of Aphrodite showing the Hellenistic ideal of female beauty. As with nearly all free-standing Greek sculpture after the Archaic period, what survives today are largely Roman copies of the Greek originals.
In Italy, the Etruscans adapted many Greek ideas into their own culture, which offered considerably more status to women. Etruscan sarcophagi often depicted a man and woman together as a couple, and decorations in Etruscan tombs sometimes featured paintings of explicit or suggested sexual activity.
Their successors, the Romans, also respected and imitated many aspects of Greek culture. As more Roman art survived than Greek, we thus have more erotic scenes, particularly in painting. Excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed the rich sexual culture of the Romans, often humorous in nature as in the depictions of Priapus, cursed with an eternal erection. Brothels often had erotic advertisements and interior decorations. Homosexual themes were not uncommon; the Warren cup depicted two male couples in coitus, and sculptures of Antinous, Emperor Hadrian’s young lover, abounded. Despite a tradition of realism, Roman depictions of bodies followed the Greek methods of idealisation. The classical model of Greece and Rome became the ideal of art and culture for centuries to come.
2. Anonymous, Venus of Laussel, c. 20,000–18,000 B. C. E. Limestone, 54 × 36 × 15.5 cm. Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux (France).
3. Anonymous, Reclining Female Figure, Naxos (?) (Greece), 2,400–2,300 B. C. E. White marble, 36.8 × 11.3 × 3.2 cm. The Menil Collection, Houston (United States).
4. Anonymous, Statuette of a Snake Goddess, c. 1,600–1,500 B. C. E. Gold and ivory, h: 16.1 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (United States).
5. Anonymous, The Cosmic Union of Geb and Nut (detail from an Egyptian papyrus), c. 1,025 B. C. E. Vignette, 53 × 93 cm. The British Museum, London (United Kingdom).
6. Anonymous, Skyphos with an Erotic Group (detail), c. 1 C. E.
7. Anonymous, Sarcophagus of a Couple from Cerveteri, c. 520–510 B. C. E. Painted terra-cotta, 111 × 194 × 69 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris (France).
Though their civilisation flourished alongside that of the Greeks, our limited understanding of Etruscan language and culture has left a veil of mystery over the people who lived in Italy before the Roman Republic. Their art was strongly influenced by that of the Greeks, as evidenced by this terracotta sarcophagus with its echoes of the style of the Greek Archaic period. In Etruscan sculpture, however, we find more lively subjects, like this couple, animated in their easy affection for each other. Like so much of Etruscan art, this is a funerary piece, designed for placement in one of the elaborate tombs the Etruscans carved out of the soft volcanic bedrock of central Italy. It reveals the Etruscan view of the afterlife: an eternal party, where men and women would lounge at a banquet, enjoying good food, drink, and the company of their loved ones.
8. Anonymous, The Sounion Kouros, c. 600 B. C. E. Marble, h: 305 cm. National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Athens (Greece).
9. Anonymous, Kleobis and Biton, Apollo Sanctuary, Delphi, c. 610–580 B. C. E. Marble, h: 218 cm. Archaeological Museum of Delphi, Delphi (Greece).
Kleobis and Biton are life-size statues that were found in the sanctuary at Delphi. An inscription identifies the artist as coming from Argos, on the Peloponnesus. The sculptures’ origin in Argos links them to the mythical twins Kleobis and Biton. These young men from Argos were said to pull a cart a full five miles in order to bring their mother to a festival dedicated to the goddess Hera. In return, Hera granted the men what was seen as a great gift: a gentle death while sleeping. The brothers fell asleep after the festival and never woke up. Their great strength, devotion to their mother, and their early deaths were memorialised in dedicatory statues offered at the great sanctuary at Delphi, according to the historian Herodotus. These statues,
