Pornocrates
The Belgian Symbolist painter Félicien Rops isn’t exactly a household name but he’s worth checking out if you like Gustav Doré or maybe Aubrey Beardsley, or if you just want to see the sorts of things that were shocking genteel 19th-century art and literature types.
Rops was best known for his book illustrations, especially for Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly‘s novel Les Diaboliques and then for a series he published as book called Les Sataniques…
Satan Creating the Monsters from Les Sataniques (no date)
The Idol (1882)
Le Calvaire (1882)
The Sacrifice (ca. 1882)
His most famous work is, in my view, his ugliest - the 1878 painting “Pornocrates” or “La dame au cochon” [The Lady with the Pig], which caused quite the scandal when exhibited in 1886 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. From wikipedia:
It was realized at a time when Rops was 45 years old and lived in Paris together with the sisters Léontine and Aurélie Duluc, who both were his mistresses and became mothers to his children.[2] The title of the work can be translated as “the ruler of fornication”. According to his own correspondence, Rops produced this painting “in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction”.[3] The work depicts a woman, holding a swine on a leash, viewed from the left side. The woman, said to be a courtesan, is almost naked, with the exception of long black silk gloves, a blindfold, a plumed hat, black shoes and stockings, and a band of gold and blue silk – accessories which only emphasize her nakedness.[4] Above the pig with golden tail, three winged putti fly away in what looks like shock or horror. Rops refers to them as “Three loves – ancient loves – vanish in tears”.
Here it is…
