From this Tuesday, a condom of around 1830 that has an erotic stamp of a nun with three clergy, accompanies the teachers of the Dutch golden age in. The museum bought it for 1,000 euros at an auction last November and now exposes it as the centerpiece of the exhibition – safe sex?which includes Dutch and French engravings and drawings on the issues of work and sexual health. The condom of almost 200 years – which according to the Pinacoteca, offers a vision of sexuality and prostitution in the nineteenth century – is manufactured, according to the analysis of the piece, of the intestine of a sheep. The Rijksmuseum believes that it could be a memory of a brothel and, according to its information, only two copies are preserved.
The most striking of the condom is the erotic stamp that adorns it. In it, “the nun appears sitting with her legs open in front of three clergymen, while pointing one of them with her finger. The men raise their cassocks and show their excitement. The words ‘voilà mon choix’ [Aquí está mi elección] They make it a parody of both the Paris trial of classical antiquity and celibacy, ”explains the museum, which suspects, after analyzing it with ultraviolet light, which was never used.
In the Paris trial of Greek mythology, Prince Trojan Paris had to decide which of the three goddesses – hera, Athena or – was the most beautiful. Each one offered him a gift, and Paris chose Aphrodite. The condom engraving plays with that myth: the nun points to one of the clergy and says “this is my choice”, as if she was making her own decision among several men, just like Paris had to choose between several goddesses.
“The condom provides the opportunity to highlight a little treated topic in our collection: sexuality and. It represents both the playful side and the serious side of sexual health. The search for pleasure lived with the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis, and unwanted pregnancy,” explains the museum. The Rijksmuseum recorded collection has about 750,000 prints, drawings and photographs, paper works and impressions in other materials. The Rijksmuseum says that, until now, he had no stamp in a condom.
