Secret Museum, Naples

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Secret Museum, Naples - Wikipedia

Coordinates: 40°51′13″N 14°15′2″E / 40.85361°N 14.25056°E

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet (Italian: Gabinetto Segreto) in Naples is the collection of 1st-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, now held in separate galleries at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the former Museo Borbonico. The term "cabinet" is used in reference to the "cabinet of curiosities" - i.e. any well-presented collection of objects to admire and study.

History

Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly 100 years, the secret room was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been kept in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum.

Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artifacts were classified through a new method of taxonomy, those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography and in 1821^[1] they were locked away in a Secret Museum. The doorway was bricked up in 1849.^[2] Throughout ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, erotic frescoes, depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols and inscriptions, and household items such as phallic oil lamps were found. The ancient Roman understanding of sexuality viewed explicit material very differently from most present-day cultures.^[a] Ideas about obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of pornography.^[3]

At Pompeii, locked metal cabinets were constructed over erotic frescos, which could be shown, for an additional fee, to gentlemen but not to ladies. This peep show was still in operation at Pompeii in the 1960s.^[4] The cabinet was only accessible to "people of mature age and respected morals", which in practice meant only educated men.

The catalogue of the secret museum was also a form of censorship, as engravings and descriptive texts played down the content of the room.

Gallery

Hermaphroditus. Wall painting from Herculaneum. 1 CE – 50 CE
Sculpture depicting sex
Anal sex between two males. Etruscan amphora. 5th century BCE
Marble statue of Satyr and Nymph. From Pollena Trocchia.
Sexual scene from Pompeii in the Secret Museum
Sexual scene from Pompeii in the Secret Museum
Sexual scene from Pompeii in the Secret Museum
Pan copulating with goat, 1st century BCE - 1st century CE

Notes

^ For Roman views of sexuality, see Paul Veyne, "Pleasures and excesses" in A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, eds. (Harvard University Press) 1987: 183–207.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Secret Cabinet in the Museo Archeologico (Naples).

^ Gabinetto Segreto Archived April 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
^ Laurentino García y García, Luciana Jacobelli, Louis Barré, Museo Segreto. With a Facsimile edition of Herculanum et Pompéi. Recueil général des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques... (1877) (2001) Pompeii: Marius Edizioni On-line Bryn Mawr Classical Review
^ Kendrick, Walter (1987). The Secret Museum (First ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 1–9. ISBN 0-520-20729-7.
^ Hare & Famin 2003, Introduction.

External links

Official website

v t e Sex museums
Asia	Antarang Museum India Love Land China Love Land South Korea
Europe	Beate Uhse Erotic Museum Germany Erotic Art Museum Germany Icelandic Phallological Museum Iceland Museum Erotica Denmark Museum of Eroticism France Museum of Sexual Cultures Ukraine Schwules Museum Germany Sex Machines Museum Czech Republic Sexmuseum Amsterdam Netherlands Vagina Museum England
North America	Erotic Heritage Museum United States Hollywood Erotic Museum United States Kinsey Institute United States Leather Archives & Museum United States Museum of Sex United States World Erotic Art Museum United States
Others	Vaginamuseum virtual museum

Museums of Naples

40°51′13″N 14°15′2″E / 40.85361°N 14.25056°E / 40.85361; 14.25056

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