The Collection and Reception of Sexual Antiquities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
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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: ………………………………………………………….. 1 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. 2 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 3 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 4 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 5 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 6 7 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