Spanking And Sex Among The Fauns
Satyrs and Fauns (to the extent they are distinguishable) are of course notorious for their drunken sexual frolics. Here’s an interesting drawing by Marcantoine Raimondi from the 1500s showing that, in the artistic imagination of that time, those frolics included sexual spanking:
I find ancient (no scholarly quibbles please, I’m using ancient here to mean simply “centuries old”) depictions of sexual practices interesting because so much of the modern war against sex is based on repressive notions of what “proper” sex consists of. Examples from history and art demonstrate that “modern perversions” are anything but modern, which strikes at the core of the conservative delusion that proper “old-fashioned” sex consists solely of the missionary position, between spouses, in the dark.
With regard to this specific piece, it’s interesting because in many of the older depictions of BDSM-ish activities, the erotic context is only implied. In this piece, the spanking faun’s urgent erection leaves no room for trying to explain away the sexual nature of the spanking.
Thanks to Spanking Blog for the image.
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Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2332
I believe it was the Roman emperor Caligula who defined all future generations to invent a new perversion. Given what we know about him and his habits, he probably did do it all.
Alas there is nothing new under the sun. Even older examples of sexy corporal punishment can be found in paintings (preserved by Vesuvius’s volcanic ash) on the satyr-decorated walls of “The Initiation Chamber” of the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii, depicting the secret initiatory rites of the Orphic-Dionysian mysteries, where a winged divinity (Aidos?) is seen whipping the bare back of a young female initiate, while a nude woman dances nearby with a pair of small cymbals. The paintings ring the walls in panels illustrating the ceremony, as the initiate becomes a follower of Dionysus. The last panel, appropriately, depicts Eros…
I wish i retained some of the photos of the carvings on the hindu temples in nepal… i mean oh my god that looked like fun.. i would have paid to be a model on some of the carving takings…. some ancient art is aimed at getting people to reproduce (like the stuff i saw in katmandu) and its not all straight sex… we do need to remember this, whcih is why eros is such a wonderful place reminding us (although not always, they do have different flavours) that porn is not a modern invention…
i’m willing to bet that somewhere, SOMEWHERE… there is porno cave paintings…. we just “interpret” it differently (even so its still there)…
Society is such a curious thing, is it not? It seems to insist on telling us what we should or shouldn’t do, and most of the time it’s just plain ridiculous. Sex IS as old as the world, how the hell can it be wrong somehow? Let’s just face it, the human is a playful animal.
Religion is mostly to blame, in my opinion. Ok, I’m no religion expert, I don’t know them all and everything, but sometimes, from the things I hear, I can’t help but think that the people that came up with some religions just met up and said, “Ok, what is fun in life?” Then they made a list of these things and said we couldn’t do them anymore or we’d go to hell. Or maybe they were just jealous because THEY weren’t getting spanked? :D
Note to Nepal Visitor:
Just over 7 years ago erotic paintings were found in a cave in Cussac, France, with human bones over 35,00 years old…
Elsewhere in rock drawings, stick figures with boners abound…
Fascinating and illuminating. Some things never change.