Art, Art History and Design, School of
Date of this Version
2023
Citation
Published in Jonietz, F., M. Richter, A.G. Stewart (eds.), Indecent Bodies in Early Modern Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023
doi 10.5117/9789463725835_ch01
Abstract
During the second quarter of the sixteenth century, Sebald Beham (1500‒1550) engraved a number of small prints with biblically related titles, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife and Death and the Lascivious Couple. These prints, tiny enough to be held in the palm of one’s hand, show the male sexually aroused. First printed in Nuremberg and later in his new home of Frankfurt am Main, these sexual or erotic prints were popular enough to be copied by contemporaries and by Beham himself. This essay argues that Beham’s prints and their copies are part of a broader interest and taste for erotic imagery that was more widespread than previously studied, beyond Italy, and that included and emphasised male erections.
Comments
Copyright © 2023 Alison Stewart