A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    662/700 (page 632)
    races may have originated in sexual cults, hence the sculptui, of the genital organs and of the sexual act which have be found in West Africa, the Island of Bali, New Guinea, Japa Tibet, the Philippine Islands, India, Egypt and elsewhere. Classic antiquity produced a wealth of obscene sculptur and paintings, some of which possess considerable artist merit. Many are now in the ' Musee secret' in Naples. The Renaissance period was the ' golden age ' of eroticisi in Art, as witness Giulio Romano's illustrations of Pieti Aretino's Sonetti Lussuriosi, and Augusto and Anniba Caracci's erotic drawings representing the various ' postures of sexual intercourse. The castles and palaces of princes an princesses, as well as the houses of the nobility, particular! in France and Italy, were decorated with erotic frescoes an pictures. At the Palace of Fontainebleau all the rooms an galleries were covered with such obscene paintings, and Quee Anne in the year 1643 had a large number of these burned Even in the garden and on the furniture were simila obscene representations. There was, for instance, the cup described by Brantome. It belonged to a prince, and was embossed with obscene figures. The prince was in the habit of offering drinks to the ladies of his court from this cup. The history of obscene art in England and France during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coincides almost entirely with the dissemination of Aretino's £ figures ', the obscene drawings of Giulio Romano and the etchings prepared from these by Marc Antonio Raimondi to illustrate the Sonetti Lussuriosi. There were sixteen representations of the figurae veneris, or the motions of sexual intercourse, illustrating the same number of sonnets by Aretino. Most of the reproductions were destroyed by Pope Clement VII, but the original copper-plates were somehow transferred to France, and during the sixteenth century a large number of copies were printed from them. Brantome records that collections [632]