Garden Of Earthly Delights – the art of love in the ancient world

This scene is on a fragment of a water basin. A sexually-aroused satyr is leaping up from seat among rocks and trying to tear the cloak from a nymph‘s lower body.

She is resisting, but her upper body and behind are already bared.

The young man is nestled closely into his reclining chair, his arms pinned to his seat and his legs pressed together and stretched out with his clothing slipped to his knee, and he is ready to perform the sexual act with his completely naked companion. The hair of the sitting person is falling in long locks over his temples and neck, unmistakeably denoting him as a youth, who is clearly getting his first sexual experience at a symposion or in a brothel.

The woman is clearly taking the lead. Because of social norms and pictorial conventions she cannot be a respectable citizen, but must be a prostitute. The hint of intimacy in the slight touching of their heads and their eye contact is no indication to the contrary.

This is probably a depiction of a bride on her bridal bed. The female figure is lying in a pro-vocative position with her right leg angled so that her body and private parts are virtually exposed. She is wearing a bridal crown on her head and is dressed in nothing but a red veil barely covering her breasts and reaching down to her hips. Her barely concealed nudity is a reference to the bridal night and her ability to bear children.

Similar clay figures of reclining nude girls – albeit dating from the late 5th Century B.C.E. – have been found in tombs of children and young people in the Keramikos area of Athens, probably intended as part of the goods they would have needed for their weddings in the afterlife. Many of the terracotta types in these tombs depict the girl as a bride.

We know from written sources that a girl would offer toys and figures of a girl – representing herself – to Artemis before her wedding to ask for a happy and fertile marriage, since the goal of a successful marriage was to produce offspring to secure the continuation of the fam-ily.

Many Greek myths which have been depicted visually
deal with seduction and desire. Whole books could be filled with the exploits
of Zeus alone, who sometimes changed into an animal to go on his erotic
adventures. The most well-known of these stories are those of Europa and the
bull and of Leda and the swan. Leda can be seen in this relief.

It depicts that well-known episode from Greek mythology. Zeus in the form of a swan is cou-pling with Leda. The offspring of this event were the beautiful Helen of Troy and the Dioscuri. Winged Eros is on the right and on the left behind Leda is an altar, and the whole scene is framed by a pair of trees.

Erotic sculptures like this marble grouping can also be
found in the gardens of Roman villas. It captures two very different figures in
a curious moment which can only be deciphered if we look more closely.

The muscular smaller figure on the left is a satyr, with his satyr tail still visible above his but-tocks. The satyr has approached the other figure on the right, which he takes to be a nymph or a maenad, with erotic intent. Like the viewer of this grouping, the satyr only becomes aware of the other’s ambiguity on coming closer.

The seated figure on the right is identified as a hermaphrodite by the presence of female breasts and male genitals. The hermaphrodite reacts to the satyr‘s advances by holding him tightly in a leg grip and trying to pull him closer. The satyr resists strongly, his efforts to es-cape the grip shown in the turn of his torso. The outcome is unclear – in this snapshot neither of the participants has the upper hand.
What we see here is a play of attraction and repulsion, of desire, surprise and fright, held in fragile balance.

For the Romans, the phallus was a symbol of fertility
and luck, protecting houses, people and animals against evil. In the time of
the Roman emperors small phallic bronzes had many uses and forms. They were
worn around the neck to bring luck, but could also be fastened to a horse’s
harness.

Phallus amulets had many forms, such as here, for example, as simple genitals.

There are also phalluses combined with bulls’ heads and other erotic symbols.

As well as male members together with the fig sign – a hand with the thumb protruding be-tween the index and middle fingers denoting the sexual act.

This statue has been heavily altered and depicts
Hermaphroditos, in mythology the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, with both female
breasts and male genitals, who embodies the principle of instability of sexual identity
and intersex beauty. On his head he is wearing a mithra, a woman’s headscarf.

Erotic and sexual themes were avoided for a long time by scholars of Antiquity, but nowa-days they are a perfectly natural topic of study, shedding light on such areas as social histo-ry, the idea of the body and gender roles.