Popular Definitions: Is "The Birth of Venus" erotica?

[Winston]

Definitely erotica. Will you just look at that giant oyster she's standing in!

[molly bloom]

He was an artist, not an art critic.

No he wasn't.

Originally posted by loinburger
What's the name of the art critic who got all of his lessons on the female anatomy from paintings, then ran screaming from the room when he saw his nude wife on his wedding night, and died a poor lonely pedophile?

I think you mean Ruskin:

Ruskin was responsible for burning all the erotic pictures by Turner.

Gossip has it that he had a wedding-night shock when he discovered that his wife, Effie Grey, had pubic hair - the marriage was never consummated!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/enjoy_cumbria/famous_people/ruskin.shtml

The fashion or style in art at the time was to show the pudenda smooth as alabaster with nary a bird's nest in sight...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
A lot of the sculpture/Paintings did, that resulted in situations like the one Loinburger discribed.

And I have gotten a 'stiffy' from that painting.

Jon Miller

- but you are a famously repressed guy, Jon

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I can't help thinking that all those thousands of nudie girlies and muscular young lads weren't all painted in the buff purely to display the artist's expertise in anatomical depiction. Than, as now, tits and bums made money.

[molly bloom]

Phillip II of Spain had his own collection of erotica, as did the Popes and Cardinals in Rome.

Caravaggio's 'Victorious Amor' shows a typical Caravaggian street urchin presented full frontal as Eros or Cupid. His penis is in the centre of the painting, and despite being shown from the front, you can also see his the curve of his buttocks, as his crotch is throust towards the viewer. It was painted for a friend of his patron, Cardinal Francesco del Monte.

All in the service of better depicting the classical world's myths, naturally...

http://www.students.sbc.edu/mckinney03/gmm/caravaggio.htm