The fragments have been cut carefully to avoid any explicit details, forcing us to guess at their original graphic content, but ultimately ensuring their survival from censure by the Vatican. Two nude males seen from the torso up suggest similar activity. Mounted on a sheet are the remains of nine separate engravings printed from copper plates: four show female heads in profile, while three depict the naked upper bodies of women in positions that hint at intercourse. These fragments of larger, more graphic images tantalize us with their suggestions of what has been cut out, for they are all that remains of an explicit set of sexual instructions known as I Modi ( The Positions), suppressed for centuries by the Catholic Church. Image courtesy of the British Museum, London Marcantonio Raimondi, after Giulio Romano Based on anthropological comparisons with Amazonian and other South American cultures, bodily fluids may have been understood by the Moche as tangible links to the ancestors, at the same time acting as nurturing fluids passed from man to woman as seminal fluid, and from woman to infant as breast milk. The presence of these "sex pots" in elite tombs, and the representation on them of skeletal figures, thus places sex in the house of the dead and the lineage of the ancestors. The vessel should be understood in the context of social inequality: for the powerful and wealthy, the point of reproduction was not simply the bearing of babies, but the creation of heirs who would continue the lineage and control the political and economic resources amassed by their ancestors. The woman’s hand rubbing the skeleton’s penis may have been seen as activating the ancestral potency of a dead ancestor and, via her living sexual activity, transmitting that power to the lineage’s descendants. In the pre-Columbian languages of the Andes, the concepts of "ancestor", "lineage" and "penis" are linguistically linked. It has been proposed that the message may be that of continuity between the living and the dead. This vessel comprises a fully fleshed woman masturbating a male skeleton. They are mostly without archaeological context, but recent systematic archaeological excavation suggests that they were elite grave gifts. The meaning of these sexual sculptures is debated, and suggestions have ranged from their being educational images providing instruction on contraception, to examples of Moche moralizing or humor, to the portrayal of ceremonial and religious rites. Another common image includes a male skeleton who masturbates or is masturbated by a woman. The most common position is anal sex, but in most of these cases the couple is heterosexual, not homosexual, their genitalia carefully detailed. Sodomy, fellatio and masturbation are most frequently represented cunnilingus is never found, and examples of penile penetration of the vagina are so rare as to be virtually absent. The vessels are always functional, with a hollow body to hold liquids and a pouring spout, often in the form of a phallus. The ceramics preserve images of war and daily activities such as weaving, and a group of at least 500 vessels carries explicitly sexual images in the form of three-dimensional sculptures on top of or as part of the pot.
Their material culture includes exquisitely crafted textiles, ornamental objects in gold and semi-precious stones, wall paintings, tattooed mummies, and ceramics. Its peoples harnessed the waters of the Andes to create a sophisticated culture with a highly stratified urban society centered on ceremonial pyramid complexes called huacas. The Moche civilization dominated the arid north coast of Peru from around the first to the eighth century AD. Image courtesy of the Art Insitute of Chicago Handle Spout Vessel in the Form of a Female and Skeletal Figure in an Erotic Embrace Take a peek, and if you're at work, make sure your boss isn’t standing over your shoulder! But what about those works whose subjects slid right past first base (and sometimes even second and third)? These ten head-scratching artworks, excerpted from Phaidon’s new The Art of the Erotic are salacious and outrageous, sure to even make the most open-minded Casanova blush. The idealized nude is a trope in Western art, with works like Michaelangelo’s David or Titan’s Venus of Urbino hardly raising eyebrows these days.