The Collection and Reception of Sexual Antiquities

365 Pages·2014·7.48 MB·English

The Collection and Reception of Sexual
Antiquities in the Late Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Century

Submitted by Jennifer Ellen Grove to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in May 2013

This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright
material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper
acknowledgement.

I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been
identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for
the award of a degree by this or any other University.

Signature: …………………………………………………………..

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Abstract

Sexually themed objects from ancient Greece and Rome have been present in
debates about our relationship with the past and with sexuality since they were
first brought to modern attention in large numbers in the Enlightenment period.
However, modern engagement with this type of material has very often been
characterised as problematic. This thesis pushes beyond the story of
reactionary censorship of ancient depictions of sex to demonstrate how these
images were meaningfully engaged with across intellectual life in late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and America. It makes a
significant and timely contribution to our existing knowledge of a key historical
period for the development of the modern understanding of sexuality and
cultural representations of it, and the central role that antiquity played in
negotiating this fundamental aspect of modernity. Crucially, this work
demonstrates how sexual antiquities functioned as symbols of pre-Christian
sexual, social and political mores, with which to think through, and to challenge,
contemporary cultural constructions around sexuality, religion, gender roles and
the development of culture itself. It presents evidence of the widespread and
prolific acquisition of sexually themed artefacts throughout private and
institutional collecting culture. This deliberate seeking out of ancient images of
sex is shown to have been motivated by debates on the universal human
connection between sex and religion, as part of wider constructions of notions
such as ‘culture’ and ‘primitivism’, with Classical material maintaining a central
position in these ideas, despite research into increasingly diverse cultures, past
and present. The purposeful engagement with sexual imagery from antiquity is
also revealed as having acted as a valuable new source of knowledge about
ancient sexual life between men which gave new impetus to the negotiation,
defence, celebration and promotion of homoerotic desire in contemporary turn
of the twentieth century, Western society.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations……………………………………………………… 6

Introduction……………………………………………………………… 9

Chapter 1. Collecting Sex: the deliberate acquisition
of sexual antiquities…………………..……………………………….. 50

Section 1. The British Museum........................................................... 57

1.1 A. W. Franks and the Keeper as donor.................................... 58
1.2 The Egypt Exploration Fund and Naukratis donations............. 62
1.3 Léon Morel and the major Gallo-Roman purchase................... 65

Section 2. The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum........................ 68

2.1 Not a magpie collection............................................................ 68
2.2 The Oppenheimer collection of anatomical votives.................. 72
2.3 Peter Johnston-Saint as ‘foreign secretary’.............................. 74
2.4 Copying the Naples ‘Secret Cabinet’........................................ 78
2.5 Gayer-Anderson and the Naukratis purchases........................ 87

Section 3. Edward Perry Warren and the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston........................................................................................ 92

3.1 The kantharos: private collecting of sexual antiquities............. 92
3.2 Warren and Marshall studying in European museums............. 96
3.3 Major vase sales……………………………………...…………... 100
3.4 W. T. Ready and the Boston Mirror……………………………… 105
3.5 Paul Hartwig and male courtship vases……………………… 107
3.6 Ludwig Pollak and the Heracles and Omphale marble relief.... 108
3.7 Setting up connections in Rome and Athens………………...… 109
3.8 Fausto Benedetti, Arretine ware and Roman homoerotic

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pieces............................................................................................. 112
3.9 The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston………………………………. 115

Chapter 2. Sacred Sexuality: sexual antiquities as
religious artefacts............................................................................. 119

Section 1. ‘Phallic Worship’: antiquity and the worship of
Procreation.......................................................................................... 119

1.1 Worship of Priapus and eighteenth-century beginnings........... 120
1.2 ‘Phallic Worship’: mid-nineteenth-century revival..................... 123
1.3 The Wellcome ‘Phallic Worship’ section................................... 126
1.4 Warren and Marshall’s ‘erotic collection’.................................. 137
1.5 Jennings, Vorberg, Brandt and Schidrowitz: accessing
and publishing sexual antiquities.................................................... 140

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Section 2. Enlightened phallus: challenging ideas of
repressive treatments......................................................................... 144

2.1 Ideas of prudery and lascivity in response to sexual
antiquities....................................................................................... 145
2.2 A new model of scholarly engagement.................................... 147
2.3 ‘Saving’ Classics from the charge of obscenity........................ 151
2.4 A new model of ‘enlightened’ treatment................................... 153
2.5 Display and ‘original’ contexts.................................................. 155
2.6 Correcting anachronistic interpretations................................... 158

Section 3. Wider contexts: ancient phallic worship in
contemporary debates over human nature......................................... 163

3.1 The material world and scholarly research............................... 164
3.2 Comparing Culture: Anthropology and comparative
religions.......................................................................................... 167
3.3 ‘Shower of Phallicism’: ‘theosophy’ and esotericism................ 175
3.4 The ‘medicalisation of sex’ ...................................................... 178

Section 4. Primitive Priapus: sexual antiquities and the theory
of cultural evolution............................................................................. 192

4.1 Constructing cultural evolution................................................. 192
4.2 Comparative Method and ‘Survivals’........................................ 195
4.3 Greece and Rome on the ‘ladder’ of cultural evolution............. 205
4.4 Declining from a ‘natural’ state................................................. 211

Chapter 3. Uranian collections: sexual antiquities and
same-sex desire................................................................................ 216

Section 1. Depicting paederastia: Greek vases, Roman vessels
and knowledge of ancient male love................................................... 217

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1.1 Greek vases and ‘real life’ paederastia.................................... 218
1.2 The physicality of paederastia.................................................. 223
1.3 Homoerotic foreplay: Beazley’s ‘Alpha’ motif........................... 231
1.4 Homoerotic sex scenes: Beazley’s ‘Gamma’ motif................... 238
1.5 The chronology of physical paederastia……………………...… 243
1.6 Anal sex on Roman vessels..................................................... 248
1.7 Warren and Beazley and the transmission of knowledge......... 257

Section 2. Performing paederastia: sexual antiquities and
modern sexual identity........................................................................ 263

2.1 Antiquities and interconnected debates on same-sex
desire.............................................................................................. 264
2.2 Theoretical considerations for the reception of ancient
homoerotics.................................................................................... 269
2.3 Debates over age difference.................................................... 273
2.4 Masculine centred society and masculine domesticity............. 282
2.5 A positive model of physical pederasty.................................... 292

Section 3. ‘Paederastic evangel’: collecting antiquities as
sexual reform...................................................................................... 300

3.1 Uranian displays at home......................................................... 301
3.2 The ‘labour of love’: Warren and the Boston museum............. 307
3.3 Subverting Bostonian ‘Puritanism’............................................ 310
3.4 A Uranian message for Americans........................................... 316

Conclusions........................................................................................ 318

Illustrations………………………………………………………………. 324

Bibliography……………………………………………………………… 347

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List of illustrations

1. Silver skyphos (‘Warren Cup’) showing men having sex
2. Bronze tintinnabulum with winged phallus-animal and bells
3. Red figure kylix showing symposium scene
4. Terracotta lamp of gnome-like man with head and phallus
5. Pottery lamp of a woman and a horse on a bed
6. Terracotta figure of phallic Harpocrates
7. Limestone figure of phallic Harpocrates
8. Pottery vase showing man and woman on a bed
9. Terracotta model of male genitalia
10. Selection of bronze amulets
11. Ivory Phallic Amulet
12. Alabaster and bronze pendant phallus with wings
13. Bronze phallic tintinnabulum
14. Bronze phallic tintinnabulum with woman rider
15. Terracotta lamp showing man and women having sex
16. Replica bronze figure of phallic dwarf
17. Plaster copy of phallic tintinnabulum with woman rider
18. Replica bronze tintinnabulum of gladiator attacking his panther-phallus
19. Replica bronze tripod of ithyphallic satyrs
20. Limestone figure of Harpocrates
21. Terracotta Lamp showing woman and horse having sex
22. Red-figure kantharos showing men and women in group sex
23. Sketch by J Marshall of decoration from black-figure amphora, 1892
24. Red-figure kylix showing ithyphallic satyr
25. Red-figre kylix showing Eros and youth in intercrural intercourse
26. Black-figure knob of lid showing man fondling boy
27. Red figure kylix showing ithyphallic satyrs and maenad
28. Inside of bronze mirror cover (‘Boston Mirror’) showing man and woman
having sex
29. Black figure cup showing man fondling boy, boy embracing man
30. Marble relief showing with Heracles and Omphale
31. Marble statue of Priapus

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32. Bronze figurine of Priapus with babies
33. Arretine bowl showing two men having sex and kissing
34. Arretine bowl showing man and woman and two men having sex
35. Terracotta figurine of satyr on horseback
36. Illustration of Roman figure of Priapus, Knight and Hamilton, 1786: Pl. V,
fig. 2
37. Bronze amulet, phallus and mano fica fist
38. Illustration of amulet, Knight and Hamilton, 1786: Pl. II
39. Bronze amulet, bull and phallus
40. Illustration of Roman amulet, Knight and Hamilton, 1786: Pl. III, fig. 2
41. Bronze amulet, phallus with wings
42. Illustration of Roman phallus with wings, Knight and Hamilton, 1786: Pl. II,
fig. 2.
43. Bronze hanging phallus with wings
44. Illustration of Roman phalluses with wings, Knight and Hamilton, 1786: Pl.
XXVII, figs. 3 and 4
45. Terracotta figure of two phalluses attacking an eye
46. Terracotta herm of Priapus?
47. Bronze figurine of Priapus
48. Illustration of Roman figure of Priapus
49. Bronze figure of phallic dwarf
50. Hall of Statuary, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, 1913
51. Bronze lingam
52. Ivory netsuke of woman embracing phallus
53. Porcelain model fruits containing couples having sex
54. Pottery jugs of skeletal figures with phallus
55. Pottery flask of oral sex between man and woman
56. Wooden post of man with phallus
57. Corel and silver amulet of mano fica fist
58. Marble plaque showing shrine
59. Black figure alabastron showing man fondling youth
60. Sketch by EP Warren of decoration from black-figure amphora, 1894
61. Red-figure kylix showing genital fondling
62. Sketch by EP Warren, of decoration from black-figure amphora, 1894

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63. Black-figure amphora showing man and youth in intercrural intercourse
64. Pen and ink with watercolour of cameo glass fragment
65. Fragment of a thurible showing man and youth

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