A Randy Royal's Baroque Porn
February 28, 2005King August created Dresden's world-famous Zwinger Palace and founded the Meissen porcelain manufacture, which still produces exquisite dishes to this day.
While most Germans would happily have a Meissen creation sit on their dinner table or mantlepiece, they might feel a little uneasy about displaying another kind of art associated with the Saxon monarch: Baroque porn engravings that depict everything from lustful men caressing women's breasts to an aroused satyr swinging a soldering iron over a woman's private parts.
"The intimate character of small-scale printed graphics -- generally the work of men -- afforded a voyeuristic close-up of the opposite sex," according to the museum's press release. "Mythological and biblical stories served as the pretext for erotic and pornographic depictions as well as sadistic fantasies."
The pictures -- 230 in total -- stem from the Collection of Prints, Drawings and Photography at Dresden's Royal Palace and were made between the 15th and 16th centuries. They were meant to, well, stimulate the "well-situated male clientele" at the time.
For August the Strong, they certainly seem to have done the trick: He is rumored to have fathered 365 children with dozens of mistresses.