History of erotic depictions

The historical study of visual and literary representations of sexuality, tracing how they were made, circulated, censored, and interpreted across cultures and periods.

Pompeian erotic art: Erotic paintings, mosaics, and objects preserved in the Roman cities buried by Vesuvius. Its surviving domestic images reveal erotic imagery in Roman daily life.
Erotic art: Art that presents sexual desire, bodies, or activity as a subject. It is the broad visual category whose historical forms this field examines.
Upper Paleolithic art: Visual artifacts made by human societies during the Upper Paleolithic, roughly 50,000 to 12,000 years ago. Some figurines and images have been interpreted as sexual, though their meanings remain debated.
Pornography: Media made primarily to elicit sexual arousal through explicit representation. The boundary between pornography and other erotic depictions has changed across historical settings.
Feminist art criticism: The analysis of art through questions of gender, power, representation, and inequality. It challenges accounts of erotic imagery that treat the maker's or viewer's perspective as universal.
Shunga: Japanese erotic prints and books, especially those produced during the Edo period. Its woodblock prints joined explicit imagery with humor, craft, and urban print culture.
Erotic literature: Literary works that depict or evoke sexual desire and activity. It is the broad textual category paired with visual representation in this history.
Venus figurines: Small prehistoric figurines, often depicting female bodies, found across parts of Europe and Asia. Their bodies raise enduring questions about prehistoric sexuality and the interpretation of erotic imagery.
Nudity in art: The representation of unclothed bodies in visual art, with meanings shaped by context and convention. Nudity can be idealized or symbolic without being treated as erotic.
Male gaze: A way of representing women from a heterosexual masculine viewpoint that makes them objects of visual attention. It helps analyze whose desire erotic images center and whose bodies they frame.