Everything you know about sex is true.

Historical erotica on sale

The largest collection of 'naughty' art goes under the hammer next week at Christie's in Paris.

Images from a Christie's catalogue are usually displayed on the internet prior to a sale - but not in the case of this "historical erotica" sale. "We do not want to attract visits of the wrong kind," says books specialist Christoph Auvermann.

A few highlights:
- The only surviving copy of the 16th century edition of Pietro Aretino's Sonnets complete with woodcuts copying the illustrations made by Renaissance artist and architect Giulio Romano. The sonnets of Aretino - one of history's wittiest and lewdest writers - accompany the drawings of 16 sexual positions by Romano, their collaboration producing one of the most notorious of all works of erotic art. In his memoirs, Casanova mentions spending New Year's Eve in 1753 with a nun doing Aretino's "straight tree" position.

- More recent is the original manuscript of Pauline Réage's Story of O, "arguably the finest erotic novel of the post-War period", according to the catalogue.

- The Marquis de Sade - described by Auvermann as "the Rolls-Royce of the subject - he's very rare and very expensive" - has a substantial presence in the collection, including 111 autographed notes by de Sade revising his work Justine, ou Le malheur de la vertu.

This is a challenging collection. Books of this kind can be very difficult to date. Publishers, who feared imprisonment or worse, tried to confuse the authorities by printing false publication dates. They also sought to bamboozle the censors by suggesting that their books were merely a reprint of earlier ones, which had already been passed.

Often authorship was anonymous, or pseudonymous; some authors hid their identity so successfully it is still not known who they were. This makes it perplexing territory for the dedicated collector, fascinated by states, proofs and editions.

sponsored by: