Biblical eroticism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"As formerly [painters] had searched through classic authors, so now they searched through the Bible for erotic scenes; and what they found there was not as harmless as the joyous legends of the Hellenes, but such scenes as Lot and his daughters, the expulsion of Hagar, the two elders peeping at Susanna in the bath, or Herodias confounding by her dance the senses of old Herod. If Judith is represented with especial frequency as the murderess of Holofernes, the reason probably is that the thought was akin to the episode of Beatrice Cenci."--The History of Painting: From the Fourth to the Early Nineteenth Century (1893/94) by Richard Muther |
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Throughout the history of painting, the bible has been used as a pretext to depict nudity.
In the visual arts, its best-known depictions are the nudity of Adam and Eve, especially during their expulsion from the garden of Eden.
Other passages that have lent themselves to erotic depictions are Bathsheba at her bath, Susanna and the elders, Potiphar's wife, the story of the Penitent Magdalene and Lot and his daughters.
Furthermore, the obsession of some early Church Fathers with sexual abstinence led to the development of very explicit passages in penitential books, see texts on lust by the early Church Fathers Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome and Clairvaux.
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Scarlet women
Jezebel, Salome, Eve, Delilah, Maacah, Potiphar's wife, Lot's daughters, Lot's wife, Herodias, and Athaliah are the bad women of the bible.
Historiography
Mirabeau in his Erotika Biblion (1783) laments the fact that the sexual practices dating from Antiquity related in the Old Testament were translated using euphemistic language.
The "Terminal Essay" (1885-86) by Burton refers to the "Old Testament" and "its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy, and bestiality?"
Other elements
Examples in the visual arts
- Joseph and Potiphar's wife (1544) [1] by Tintoretto at the Prado
- Lot and his daughters[2] Kunsthistorisches Museum Albrecht Altdorfer
- Susanna and the Elders (Jan Matsys) by Jan Matsys
- Memling Bathsheba[3]
- The Temptation of St. Anthony (theme in the visual arts), not featured in the bible
See also
- Biblical stories
- Christianity and sexual morality
- Bad women of the bible
- Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible
- Sexuality of Jesus
- Sex in the Hebrew Bible
- Pretexts for nudity in art