The history of erotic depictions includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, dram

atic arts, music and writings that show scenes of a sexual nature throu time. Th
ey have been created by nearly every civilization, ancient and modern. Early cul
tures often associated the sexual act with supernatural forces and thus their re
ligion is intertwined with such depictions. In Asian countries such as India, Ne
pal, Sri Lanka, Japan and China, representations of sex and erotic art have spec
ific spiritual meanings within native religions. The Greeks and Romans produced
much art and decoration of an erotic natghouture, much of it integrated with the
ir religious beliefs and cultural practices.
In more recent times, as communication technologies evolved, each new technique,
such as printing, photography, motion pictures and computers, has been adapted
to display and disseminate these depictions.
Attitudes through history
In early times, erotic depictions were often a subset of the indigenous or relig
ious art of cultures and as such were not set aside or treated differently than
any other type. The modern concept of pornography did not exist until the Victor
ian era. Its current definition was added in the 1860s, replacing the older one
meaning writings about prostitutes. It first appeared in an English medical dict
ionary in 1857 defined as "a description of prostitutes or of prostitution, as a
matter of public hygiene." By 1864, the first version of the modern definition
had appeared in Webster's Dictionary: "licentious painting employed to decorate
the walls of rooms sacred to bacchanalian orgies, examples of which exist in Pom
peii." This was the beginning of what today refers to explicit pictures in gener
al. Though some specific sex acts were regulated or prohibited by earlier laws,
merely looking at objects or images depicting them was not outlawed in any count
ry until 1857. In some cases, the possession of certain books, engravings or ima
ge collections was outlawed, but the trend to compose laws that actually restric
ted viewing sexually explicit things in general was a Victorian construct.
Pornography has existed throughout recorded history and has adapted to each new
medium .
The first instances of modern pornography date back to the sixteenth century whe
n sexually explicit images differentiated itself from traditional sexual represe
ntations in European art by combining the traditionally explicit representation
of sex and the moral norms of those times.
The first amendment prohibits the U.S. government from restricting speech based
on its content. Indecent speech is protected and may be regulated, but not banne
d. Obscenity is the judicially recognized exception to the first amendment. Hist
orically, this exception was used in an attempt to ban information about sex edu
cation, studies on nudism, and sexually explicit literature.
In the 1970s in the United States, attempts were made to shut down the pornograp
hy industry by prosecuting individuals on prostitution charges. In the case of P
eople v. Freeman, the California Supreme Court ruled to distinguish prostitution
as an individual taking part in sexual activities in exchange for money versus
an individual who is portraying a sexual act on-screen as part of their acting p
erformance. The case was not appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus it is only
binding in the state of California.
Early depictions
Palaeolithic and mesolithic
Among the oldest surviving examples of erotic depictions are Paleolithic cave pa
intings and carvings. Some of the more common images are of animals, hunting sce
nes and depictions of human genitalia. Nude human beings with exaggerated sexual
characteristics are depicted in some Paleolithic paintings and artifacts . Rece
ntly discovered cave art at Creswell Crags in England, thought to be more than 1
2,000 years old, includes some symbols that may be stylized versions of female g
enitalia. As there is no direct evidence of the use of these objects, it is spec
ulated that they may have been used in religious rituals, or for a more directly
sexual purpose.
Archaeologists in Germany reported in April 2005 that they had found what they b
elieve is a 7,200-year-old scene depicting a male figurine bending over a female
figurine in a manner suggestive of sexual intercourse. The male figure has been

named Adonis von Zschernitz.

Egypt
One artifact from Egypt, called the Turin Erotic Papyrus has been dubbed the "me
n's magazine" of its time. It partly consists of explicit depictions of sexual a
cts and was painted in the Ramesside period .
Greek and Roman
The ancient Greeks often painted sexual scenes on their ceramics, many of them f
amous for being some of the earliest depictions of same-sex relations and pedera
sty. Greek art often portrays sexual activity, but it is impossible to distingui
sh between what to them was illegal or immoral since the ancient Greeks did not
have a concept of pornography. Their art simply reflects scenes from daily life,
some more sexual than others. Carved phalli can be seen in places of worship su
ch as the temple of Dionysus on Delos, while a common household item and protect
ive charm was the herm, a statue consisting of a head on a square plinth with a
prominent phallus on the front. The Greek male ideal had a small penis, an aesth
etic the Romans later adopted. The Greeks also created the first well-known inst
ance of lesbian eroticism in the West, with Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite and other
homoerotic works.
There are numerous sexually explicit paintings and sculptures from the ruined Ro
man buildings in Pompeii and Herculaneum but the original purposes of the depict
ions can vary. On one hand, in the "Villa of the Mysteries", there is a ritual f
lagellation scene that is clearly associated with a religious cult and this imag
e can be seen as having religious significance rather than sexual. On the other
hand, graphic paintings in a brothel advertise sexual services in murals above e
ach door. In Pompeii, phalli and testicles engraved in the sidewalks were create
d to aid visitors in finding their way by pointing to the prostitution and enter
tainment district as well as general decoration. The Romans considered depiction
s of sex to be decoration in good taste, and indeed the pictures reflect the sex
ual mores and practices of their culture, as on the Warren Cup. Sex acts that we
re considered taboo were depicted in baths for comic effect. Large phalli were
often used near entryways, for the phallus was a good luck charm, and the carvin
gs were common in homes. One of the first objects excavated when the complex was
discovered was a marble statue showing the god Pan having sex with a goat, a de
tailed depiction of bestiality considered so obscene that it was not on public d
isplay until the year 2000 and remains in the Secret Museum, Naples.
Peruvian
The Moche of Peru are another ancient people that sculpted explicit scenes of se
x into their pottery. At least 500 Moche ceramics have sexual themes. The most f
requently depicted act is anal sex, with scenes of vaginal penetration being ver
y rare. Most pairs are heterosexual, with carefully carved genitalia to show tha
t the anus, rather than the vagina, is being penetrated. Often, an infant is dep
icted breastfeeding while the couple has sex. Fellatio is sometimes represented,
but cunnilingus is absent. Some depict male skeletons masturbating, or being ma
sturbated by living women.
Rafael Larco Hoyle speculates that their purpose was much different than that of
other early cultures. He states that the Moche believed that the world of the d
ead was the exact opposite of the world of the living. Therefore, for funeral of
ferings, they made vessels showing sex acts such as masturbation, fellatio and a
nal sex that would not result in offspring. The hope was that in the world of th
e dead, they would take on their opposite meaning and result in fertility. The e
rotic pottery of the Moche is depicted in Hoyle's book Checan.
Asia
There has been a long tradition of erotic painting in the East. India, Japan, Ch
ina, Persia and other lands produced copious quantities of art celebrating the h
uman faculty of love. The works depict love between men and women as well as sam
e-sex love. One of the most famous ancient sex manuals was the Kama Sutra, writt
en by Vatsyayana in India during the first few centuries CE. Another notable tre
atise on human sexuality is The Perfumed Garden by the Tunisian Muhammad ibn Muh
ammad al-Nafzawi, dating to the fifteenth century
In Japan, the erotic art found its greatest flowering in the medium of the woodb

lock prints. The style is known as and some of its classic practitioners produc
ed a large number of works. Painted hand scrolls were also very popular. Shunga
appeared in the 13th century and continued to grow in popularity despite occasio
nal attempts to suppress them, the first of which was a ban on erotic books know
n as issued by the Tokugawa shogunate in Kyoho 7 . Shunga only ceased to be prod
uced in the 19th century when photography was invented.
The Chinese tradition of the erotic was also extensive, with examples of the art
dating back as far as the Yuan Dynasty . The erotic art of China reached its pe
ak during the latter part of the Ming Dynasty .
In both China and Japan, eroticism played a prominent role in the development of
the novel. The Tale of Genji, the work by an 11th-century Japanese noblewoman t
hat is often called "the world's first novel," traces the many affairs of its he
ro in discreet but carnal language. From 16th-century China, the still more expl
icit novel The Plum in the Golden Vase has been called one of the four great cla
ssical novels of Chinese literature. The Tale of Genji has been celebrated in Ja
pan since it was written, but The Plum in the Golden Vase was suppressed as porn
ography for much of its history, and replaced on the list of four classics.
European
Erotic scenes in medieval illuminated manuscripts also appeared, but were seen o
nly by those who could afford the extremely expensive hand made books. Most of t
hese drawings occur in the margins of books of hours. Many medieval scholars thi
nk that the pictures satisfied the medieval cravings for both erotic pictures an
d religion in one book, especially since it was often the only book someone owne
d. Other scholars think the drawings in the margins were a kind of moral caution
, but the depiction of priests and other ranking officials engaged in sex acts s
uggests political origins as well.
Beginnings of mass circulation
Printing
Prints became very popular in Europe from the middle of the fifteenth century, a
nd because of their compact nature, were very suitable for erotic depictions tha
t did not need to be permanently on display. Nudity and the revival of classical
subjects were associated from very early on in history of the print, and many p
rints of subjects from mythological subjects were clearly in part an excuse for
erotic material; the engravings of Giovanni Battista Palumba in particular. An e
arthier eroticism is seen in a printing plate of 1475-1500 for an Allegory of Co
pulation where a young couple are having sex, with the woman's legs high in the
air, at one end of a bench, while at the other end a huge penis, with legs and w
ings and a bell tied around the bottom of the glans, is climbing onto the bench.
Although the plate has been used until worn out, then re-engraved and heavily u
sed again, none of the contemporary impressions printed, which probably ran into
the hundreds, have survived.
The loves of classical gods, especially those of Jupiter detailed in Ovid provid
ed many subjects where actual sex was the key moment in the story, and its depic
tion was felt to be justified. In particular Leda and the Swan, where the god ap
peared as a swan and seduced the woman, was depicted very explicitly; it seems t
hat this rather strangely was considered more acceptable because he appeared as a bi
rd. For a period ending in the early 16th century the boundaries of what could
be depicted in for display in the semi-privacy of a Renaissance palace seemed un
certain. Michelangelo's Leda was a fairly large painting showing sex in progress
, and one of the hundreds of illustrations to the book the Hypnerotomachia Polip
hili of 1499 shows Leda and the Swan having sex on top of a triumphal car watche
d by a crowd.
In the 16th century an attempt to print erotic material caused a scandal when th
e well-known Italian artist Marcantonio Raimondi published I Modi in 1524, an il
lustrated book of 16 "postures" or sexual positions. Raimondi was subsequently i
mprisoned by the Pope Clement VII and all copies of the illustrations were destr
oyed. Raimondi based the engravings on a series of erotic paintings that Giulio
Romano was doing as a commission for the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Though the tw
o depictions were very similar, only Raimondi was prosecuted because his engravi
ngs were capable of being seen by the public. Romano did not know of the engravi

ngs until Pietro Aretino came to see the original paintings while Romano was sti
ll working on them. Aretino then composed sixteen explicit sonnets to go with t
he paintings and secured Raimondi's release from prison. I Modi was then publish
ed a second time in 1527, with the poems and the pictures, making this the first
time erotic text and images were combined, though the papacy once more seized a
ll the copies it could find. Raimondi escaped prison that time, but the censorsh
ip was so strict that no complete editions of the original printings have ever b
een found. The text in existence is only a copy of a copy that was discovered 40
0 years later. In his famous diary, Samuel Pepys records purchasing a copy for s
olitary reading and then burning it so that it would not be discovered by his wi
fe; "the idle roguish book, L'escholle de filles; which I have bought in plain b
inding because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it."
During the Enlightenment, many of the French free-thinkers began to exploit porn
ography as a medium of social criticism and satire. Libertine pornography was a
subversive social commentary and often targeted the Catholic Church and general
attitudes of sexual repression. The market for the mass-produced, inexpensive pa
mphlets soon became the bourgeoisie, making the upper class worry, as in England
, that the morals of the lower class and weak-minded would be corrupted since wo
men, slaves and the uneducated were seen as especially vulnerable during that ti
me. The stories and illustrations were often anti-clerical and full of misbehav
ing priests, monks and nuns, a tradition that in French pornography continued in
to the 20th century. In the period leading up to the French Revolution, pornogra
phy was also used as political commentary; Marie Antoinette was often targeted w
ith fantasies involving orgies, lesbian activities and the paternity of her chil
dren, and rumours circulated about the supposed sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI
. During and after the Revolution, the famous works of the Marquis de Sade were
printed. They were often accompanied by illustrations and served as political co
mmentary for their author.
The English answer to this was Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure written in 1748 b
y John Cleland. While the text satirised the literary conventions and fashionabl
e manners of 18th century England, it was more scandalous for depicting a woman,
the narrator, enjoying and even reveling in sexual acts with no dire moral or p
hysical consequences. The text is hardly explicit as Cleland wrote the entire bo
ok using euphemisms for sex acts and body parts, employing 50 different ones jus
t for the term penis. Two small earthquakes were credited to the book by the Bis
hop of London and Cleland was arrested and briefly imprisoned, but Fanny Hill co
ntinued to be published and is one of the most reprinted books in the English la
nguage. However, it was not legal to own this book in the United States until 19
63 and in the United Kingdom until 1970.
Photography
In 1839, Louis Daguerre presented the first practical process of photography to
the French Academy of Sciences. Unlike earlier photographic methods, his daguerr
eotypes had stunning quality and detail and did not fade with time. Artists adop
ted the new technology as a new way to depict the nude form, which in practice w
as the feminine form. In so doing, at least initially, they tried to follow the
styles and traditions of the art form. Traditionally, an acadmie was a nude study
done by a painter to master the female form. Each had to be registered with th
e French government and approved or they could not be sold. Soon, nude photograp
hs were being registered as acadmie and marketed as aids to painters. However, th
e realism of a photograph as opposed to the idealism of a painting made many of
these intrinsically erotic. including the erotic images. This technology produce
d a type of three dimensional view that suited erotic images quite well. Althoug
h thousands of erotic daguerreotypes were created, only around 800 are known to
survive; however, their uniqueness and expense meant that they were once the toy
s of rich men. Due to their rarity, the works can sell for more than 10,000 GBP.
This invention permitted an almost limitless number of prints to be produced fr
om a glass negative. Also, the reduction in exposure time made a true mass marke
t for pornographic pictures possible. The technology was immediately employed to
reproduce nude portraits. Paris soon became the centre of this trade. In 1848 o
nly thirteen photography studios existed in Paris; by 1860, there were over 400.

Most of them profited by selling illicit pornography to the masses who could no
w afford it. The pictures were also sold near train stations, by traveling sales
men and women in the streets who hid them under their dresses. They were often p
roduced in sets, and exported internationally, mainly to England and the United
States. Both the models and the photographers were commonly from the working cla
ss, and the artistic model excuse was increasingly hard to use. By 1855, no more
photographic nudes were being registered as acadmie, and the business had gone u
nderground to escape prosecution.
Magazines
In 1880, halftone printing was used to reproduce photographs inexpensively for t
he first time. This was the first format that allowed pornography to become a ma
ss market phenomena, it now being more affordable and more easily acquired than
any previous form.
Another early form of pornography were comic books known as Tijuana bibles that
began appearing in the U.S. in the 1920s and lasted until the publishing of glos
sy colour men's magazines commenced. These were crude hand drawn scenes often us
ing popular characters from cartoons and culture.
In the 1940s, the word "pinup" was coined to describe pictures torn from men's m
agazines and calendars and "pinned up" on the wall by U.S. soldiers in World War
II. While the '40s images focused mostly on legs, by the '50s, the emphasis shi
fted to breasts. Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe were two of the most popular pi
nup models. In the second half of the 20th century, pornography evolved into the
men's magazines such as Playboy and Modern Man of the 1950s. In fact, the begin
ning of the modern men's glossy magazine can be traced to the 1953 purchase by
Hugh Hefner of a photograph of Marilyn Monroe to use as the centerfold of his ne
w magazine Playboy. Soon, this type of magazine was the primary medium in which
pornography was consumed.
In postwar Britain digest magazines such as Beautiful Britons, Spick and Span, w
ith their interest in nylons and underwear
and the racier Kamera published by Harrison Marks were incredibly popular. The c
reative force behind Kamera was Harrison Marks' partner Pamela Green. These maga
zines featured nude or semi-nude women in extremely coy or flirtatious poses wit
h no hint of pubic hair.
Penthouse, started by Bob Guccione in England in 1965, took a different approach
. Women looked indirectly at the camera, as if they were going about their priva
te idylls. This change of emphasis was influential in erotic depictions of women
. Penthouse was also the first magazine to publish pictures that included pubic
hair and full frontal nudity, both of which were considered beyond the bounds of
the erotic and in the realm of pornography at the time. In the late 1960s, maga
zines began to move into more explicit displays often focusing on the buttocks a
s standards of what could be legally depicted and what readers wanted to see cha
nged. By the 1970s, they were focusing on the pubic area and eventually, by the
1990s, featured sexual penetration, lesbianism and homosexuality, group sex, mas
turbation, and fetishes in the more hard-core magazines such as Hustler.
Moving pictures
Production of erotic films commenced almost immediately after the invention of t
he motion picture. Two of the earliest pioneers were Frenchmen Eugne Pirou and Al
bert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving erotic film for Pirou.
The 7-minute 1896 film Le Coucher de la Mariee had Louise Willy performing a bat
hroom striptease. Other French filmmakers also considered that profits could be
made from this type of risqu films, showing women disrobing.
Also in 1896 Fatima's Coochie-Coochie Dance was released as a short nickelodeon
kinetoscope/film featuring a gyrating belly dancer named Fatima. Her gyrating an
d moving pelvis was censored, one of the earliest films to be censored. At the t
ime, there were numerous risque films that featured exotic dancers. In the same
year, The May Irwin Kiss contained the very first kiss on film. It was a 20-seco
nd film loop, with a close-up of a nuzzling couple followed by a short peck on t
he lips . The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and pornographic to early
moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral
reform - because kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution. featu

ring an unnamed long-haired young model wearing a flesh-colored body stocking in

a direct frontal pose The pose is in the style of Botticelli's The Birth of Ven
us.
Because Pirou is nearly unknown as a pornographic filmmaker, credit is often giv
en to other films for being the first. In Black and White and Blue, one of the m
ost scholarly attempts to document the origins of the clandestine 'stag film' tr
ade, Dave Thompson recounts ample evidence that such an industry first had sprun
g up in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities by around t
he start of the 20th century, and then quickly spread through Central Europe ove
r the following few years; however none of these earliest pornographic films is
known to survive. According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts, "the earliest por
nographic motion picture which can definitely be dated is A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bon
ne auberge" made in France in 1908; the plot depicts a weary soldier who has a t
ryst with a servant girl at an inn. The Argentinian El Satario might be even old
er; it has been dated to somewhere between 1907 and 1912. He also notes that "th
e oldest surviving pornographic films are contained in America's Kinsey Collecti
on. One film demonstrates how early pornographic conventions were established. T
he German film Am Abend is "a ten-minute film which begins with a woman masturb
ating alone in her bedroom, and progresses to scenes of her with a man performin
g straight sex, fellatio and anal penetration."
In Austria, Johann Schwarzer formed his Saturn-Film production company which was
able to produce 52 erotic productions between 1906 and 1911, when the company w
as dissolved by the censorship authorities and the films destroyed.
Soon illegal, stag films or blue films as they were called, were produced underg
round by amateurs for many years starting in the 1940s. Processing the film took
considerable time and resources, with people using their bathtubs to wash the f
ilm when processing facilities were unavailable. The films were then circulated
privately or by traveling salesman but being caught viewing or possessing them
put one at the risk of prison.
The post-war era saw developments that further stimulated the growth of a mass m
arket. Technological developments, particularly the introduction of the 8mm and
super-8 film gauges, resulted in the widespread use of amateur cinematography. E
ntrepreneurs emerged to supply this market. In Britain, the productions of Harri
son Marks were "soft core", but considered risqu in the 1950s. On the continent,
such films were more explicit. Lasse Braun was as a pioneer in quality colour pr
oductions that were, in the early days, distributed by making use of his father'
s diplomatic privileges. Pornography was first legalized in Denmark July 1969, s
oon followed by the Netherlands the same year and Sweden in 1971, and this led t
o an explosion of commercially produced pornography in those countries, with the
Color Climax Corporation quickly becoming the leading pornographic producer for
the next couple of decades. Now that being a pornographer was a legitimate occu
pation, there was no shortage of businessmen to invest in proper plant and equip
ment capable of turning out a mass-produced, cheap, but quality product. Vast am
ounts of this new pornography, both magazines and films, were smuggled into othe
r parts of Europe, where it was sold "under the counter" or shown in "members o
nly" cinema clubs. The 1971 film Boys in the Sand represented a number of pornog
raphic firsts. As the first generally available gay pornographic film, the film
was the first to include on-screen credits for its cast and crew, to parody the
title of a mainstream film, and to be reviewed by The New York Times. In 1972, p
ornographic films hit their public peak in the United States with both Deep Thro
at and Behind the Green Door being met with public approval and becoming social
phenomena. The Devil in Miss Jones followed in 1973 and many predicted that fran
k depictions of sex onscreen would soon become commonplace, but culture soon shi
fted to the more conservative side and that fantasy never came true. William Rot
sler expressed this in 1973, "Erotic films are here to stay. Eventually they wil
l simply merge into the mainstream of motion pictures and disappear as a labeled
sub-division. Nothing can stop this." In Britain however, Deep Throat was not a
pproved in its uncut form until 2000 and not shown publicly until June 2005.
Video and digital depictions
By 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more conveni

ent medium of videotape. Many film directors resisted this shift at first becaus
e of the different image quality that video tape produced; however, those who di
d change soon were collecting most of the industry's profits since consumers ove
rwhelmingly preferred the new format. The technology change happened quickly and
completely when directors realised that continuing to shoot on film was no long
er a profitable option. This change moved the films out of the theaters and into
people's private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions a
nd the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and e
xpanded to cover every fetish possible since filming was now so inexpensive. Ins
tead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands now were,
including compilations of just the sex scenes from various videos. Additionally
, the clearer sharper images it provides have prompted performers to get cosmeti
c surgery and professional grooming to hide imperfections that are not visible o
n other video formats. Other adaptations have been different camera angles and t
echniques for close-ups and lighting.