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Foot binding (pinyin: chanzu, literally 'bound feet') was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the first half of 20th century. There is little evidence for the custom prior to the court of the Southern Tang dynasty in Nanjing, which celebrated the fame of its dancing girls, renowned for their tiny feet and beautiful bow shoes.<br/><br/> What is clear is that foot binding was first practised among the elite and only in the wealthiest parts of China, which suggests that binding the feet of well-born girls represented their freedom from manual labor and, at the same time, the ability of their husbands to afford wives who did not need to work, who existed solely to serve their men and direct household servants while performing no labor themselves. Bound feet were considered intensely erotic in traditional Chinese culture. Qing Dynasty sex manuals listed 48 different ways of playing with women's bound feet.<br/><br/> Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse (November 1784–1844) was a French painter and lithographer. Born in Corbeil, he began studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1803. His first painting, L'Arabe pleurant son coursier (The Arab Mourning his Steed), won him a first class medal at the exhibition at the Salon in 1812. Mauzaisse's specialty was painting historical subjects, especially battle scenes, but he also painted portraits. In 1822, he was commissioned to decorate several ceilings in the Louvre. He died in Paris.
From Eiri's 'Models of Calligraphy' published in 1801 a female-female love scene with one of the women (the younger one) wearing a harigata (artificial phallus) and holding a sea shell containing some kind of lubricant.
Homosexuality as a theme in traditional Chinese art is not common and almost always representative of male homosexualty (the 'Way of the Cut Sleeve' or the 'Bitten Peach'. Lesbians and Lesbianism as a theme is still more unusual, and this painting was probably done to titillate men. Today (21st century) Chinese lesbians usually call themselves lazi (lāzi) or lala (lālā). These two terms are abbreviations of the transliteration of the English term lesbian. These slang terms are also commonly used in Mainland China.
Homosexuality as a theme in traditional Chinese art is not common and almost always representative of male homosexualty (the 'Way of the Cut Sleeve' or the 'Bitten Peach'. Lesbians and Lesbianism as a theme is still more unusual, and this painting was probably done to titillate men. Today (21st century) Chinese lesbians usually call themselves lazi (lāzi) or lala (lālā). These two terms are abbreviations of the transliteration of the English term lesbian. These slang terms are also commonly used in Mainland China.
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is thought that she died around 570 BCE, though little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.<br/><br/> Sappho's poetry centers on passion and love for various personages and both genders. The word lesbian derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos, while her name is also the origin of the word sapphic; neither word was applied to female homosexuality until the nineteenth century.
Homosexuality as a theme in traditional Chinese art is not common and almost always representative of male homosexualty (the 'Way of the Cut Sleeve' or the 'Bitten Peach'. Lesbians and Lesbianism as a theme is still more unusual, and this painting was probably done to titillate men. Today (21st century) Chinese lesbians usually call themselves lazi (lāzi) or lala (lālā). These two terms are abbreviations of the transliteration of the English term lesbian. These slang terms are also commonly used in Mainland China.