This Pornographic Drawing is Older than the USA

Did you know that Henry Fuseli, the Swiss-born painter of the dramatic “The Nightmare”, shown below in all its haunting glory, also had a penchant for drawing naughty, naughty images?

Creepy, huh? A cheeky demon is getting comfortable on a sleeping woman’s chest while a creepy, horse-like entity with huge pupilless eyes stares at them.

Now, let’s talk about those naughty images instead. And yes, Fuseli drew hundreds of them in the 18th Century, around the time of the American and French Revolutions. Yup, people were already drawing porn when George Washington and Marie Antoinette were still alive (and even well before that), bet your high school history teacher never taught you about this!

Ladies and gents, you’re about to feast your eyes on old-school porn.

Naughty images such as this one, graphically titled, “Symplegma of a shackled naked man and two women”.

A “symplegma” is simply a Greek word meaning “twining together” or “entanglement” and the term is used by art historians to refer to any depiction of sexual intercourse. It doesn’t matter how many people are involved — it could be a couple, a threesome, an orgy, a gangbang — as long as you’re drawing multiple naked bodyparts entwined in lust, you have a symplegma.

And what do you know? Fuseli’s drawing depicts a shackled, naked man in a very compromising position with two (also quite naked) women. It was also drawn sometime between 1770 and 1778.

That’s right, while George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were still very much alive and busy chasing the Brits out of the Americas — this rather horny Swiss artist was busy creating a variety of artistic masterpieces (pornographic or otherwise) on the other side of the Atlantic.

“I think I watched the same thing on Pornhub the other night”

The drawing, “Symplegma of a shackled naked man and two women” shows some rather interesting details.

The naked man sits on a small bed or sofa or some kind. His hands are tied or shackled behind while the ladies pleasure him. Yes, if your kinky mind thinks this looks exactly like modern BDSM porn, then you’re right — like I’ve been telling people, almost every porn category listed on PornHub has been in existence for a long, long time.

His legs are splayed wide open and are tied by the ankles to either the bedposts or else to other bits of furniture. His body is smooth, muscular and athletic (I mean, take a look at those thighs!)

He also happens to be very erect and one woman grips the tip of his karge penis while playing with his testicles. Her right hand appears to be rubbing the sensitive spot at the base of his balls.

The other woman embraces him from behind, kissing him on the lips.

Both ladies have those tall, powdered hairstyles or wigs that were all the rage in the late 18th Century (Must have been an absolute headache to maintain!).

Now the question is, whose floating, disembodied face is that?

A voyeur, perhaps? Or someone fantasising? Is the drawing a vignette, a peak into someone’s horny dream?

Sometimes you just need a helping hand (willing or otherwise)

Here’s another naughty drawing by the same artist. “Symplegma of a man and a woman with a helping servant” depicts a naked threesome — one man laying on a bed while a woman straddles and embraces him. A servant girl, also naked, guides his erect penis into her vagina while fondling his testicles and possibly fingering her.

The woman riding him appears to have elaborate curly hair and possibly some kind of lace cap while the servant girl has a much simpler hairdo. This implies that the man and woman are the master and mistress of the house and the employers of said servant girl.

Now this was long before the very concept of workers’ rights was codified and it was very likely that the unfortunate girl was coerced into serving her master and mistress in such an “indelicate” manner.

Was the scene a depiction of an actual occurrence in the life of the artist, or was it mere fantasy? We may never know.

Why (and for whom) did he draw those naughty images?

We may never know, but we do know that most of his erotic drawings were kept in private.

We also know that after his death in 1825, his wife burned many of his pornographic drawings.

Was it because she knew her husband had been making “shocking” pornographic images? Was it because she did not want his reputation tainted by his illicit art? After all, some of his more mainstream paintings like “The Nightmare” became immensely famous in his lifetime.

Or more likely, was it because some of his drawings depicted her in erotic poses, often in partial states of undress? Something like that surfacing to the public would be damaging to a woman of that time.

The drawings must have only been shared within a very close circle. Fellow daring libertine artists? Wealthy patrons with expensive secret collections? Again, we might never know.

Porn in the modern world

That is the ultimate difference between erotic works from previous eras. In ancient times, erotic art was often clandestine and exclusive — it was created for and by an elite group of highly-educated people to be enjoyed in the privacy of elegant salons, drawing rooms and boudoirs. It was often the centrepiece of secret collections, hidden away from prying eyes.

The erotic art of our ancestors was never meant for public consumption nor was it meant to be mass produced.

Mass production, now that’s the word.

Perhaps this is what modern technology and the Internet in particular has done to pornography. No longer hidden away, no longer something to be whispered about in hush voices in elegant boudoirs.

The Age of Information has made pornography a freely-available product — a cheap industrial commodity easily available at the click of a button. And often dangerously so, but that is a topic for another day.

A reminder of our own transience

Porn in one form or another, has been around for as long as humans have existed. Whether in the form of bawdy poetry (wait till I show you some shocking ancient Arabian poetry from over a thousand years ago!) to elaborate drawings such as those done by Henry Fuseli — these works of art, and they are indeed, works of art — serve to titillate, arouse, shock, scandalise and remind.

Yes, to remind.

Erotic art reminds us of the fragility and brevity of human life. We take for granted how much the life expectancy of the average human has risen over the past few decades. In ancient times, when people barely survived to middle age, dirty poems, songs, carvings and drawings served to teach young people about the birds and the bees. They titillate those who appreciate them, from farmers to nobles, from owners of crude drawings to proprietors of elaborate paintings. They send us, those reading and watching from a distant time and place the message: “Take it easy, life is short. Have fun and enjoy!”