This original detail was revealed during the controversial restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, which began in 1980. In contrast to the familiar version in which God keeps Adam at hands’ length, here the act of creation and touch are inextricably linked. Scholars have discovered that the contours of the divine hand correspond precisely with the female internal sexual anatomy, and that the human finger is pressing the g-spot. A personal journal of a nun from the time recounts covert premarital rites that took place in the chapel, with spiritual guides using this image to instruct young brides and grooms in the art of love making. It is no secret that Michelangelo’s relationship with the Catholic Church was strained. The Pope likely demanded that Michelangelo change the image to portray the narrative in the second chapter of Genesis in which Woman is created from the ribs of Man; however, this original work was retrieved and preserved by a group of acolytes who, like the painter himself, worshipped the God of whom it is written, "Male and Female They created Them" (Genesis 1:27).

This 1434 oil painting on oak panel commissioned by the Flemish merchant Mrs. Arnolfini to commemorate the orgasmic birth of her daughter is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art. Its beauty, iconography, geometric orthogonal perspective, and expansion of the pictorial space with the use of a mirror is all quite remarkable. It is among the oldest panel paintings to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842.

While it is not explicitly a religious painting, the subject marks a departure from the Church’s taboo regarding the study of anatomy, and it demonstrates a desire to explore and celebrate the physiological origins of life. The image draws an explicit connection between power, pleasure, and the act of creation.

Notably, 1434 was also the year Jan van Eyck completed his lesser-known Portrait of G. Arnolfini and his Wife, commissioned by Mrs. Arnolfini’s husband.

This ceramic vase was traced to the home of a noblewoman in ancient Greece circa 500 BCE and was likely commissioned to commemorate an orgasmic birth. This and similar vases were later traded by 15th century Flemish merchants and brought to Flanders, where they were highly valued for their aesthetic and spiritual qualities and often displayed in birthing rooms to inspire women during birth. Scholars suggest that the Flemish Master of The Orgasmic Birth of Mrs. Arnolfini (see 18) was likely inspired by the composition of this vase.

This depiction of the miracle of the menstruating martyr is of Flemish origin. The right panel depicts a crucifixion scene; the martyr’s blood is visible on her hands, feet, and brow, and the miraculous post-crucifixion menstrual blood trickles down her leg. The impression of blood is amplified by the brilliant red cloth of honor draped behind her. The left panel shows a swooning male figure supported by a companion, with both dressed in pale folded robes. The lily and skull on the ground highlight the symbolic cyclicality of life and death.

La Menarquia is set in the artist’s studio inside Philippa IV’s palace in 17th century Madrid. In the center foreground stands her daughter, the 12-year-old Infanta Margaret Teresa, moments before her royal Menarche ceremony, the much anticipated initiation rite marking her first blood. She wears a scarlet dress, a dramatic symbol of her blood power. Her partially concealed gaze reflects the upcoming transition from light to dark –from primal to higher consciousness – that is to unfold in the ceremony. ⁠

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The three attendants wear ceremonial garbs that express key ritual elements and emphasize the inherent connection, marked by the ritual, between internal physiology and external celestial cycles. The figure to the left adorns the Moon Cap, the Bulbous Tunic, and the Intestinal Skirt. To the right, one figure wears the skeletal Pelvis Shirt, and the other flaunts the Janus Headdress, recalling the Roman god of gateways, doorways, beginnings and endings, past and future, and the duality of the masculine and feminine. They hold scientific tools of the day symbolizing the interplay between menstrual and scientific knowledge. On the back wall, a mirror reflects a life size sculpture of a menstruant, no doubt a treasured heirloom. A dark figure, also adorned with a Janus Headdress, holds the curtain to the dawn-lit ceremony.⁠

The Adult Playhouse of Avignon is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the artist. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays six nude figures in an adult playhouse in the Spanish town of Avignon. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting and confrontational manner and none is conventionally erotic.

The stacked figures are often connected in the literature to the artist’s visit, midway through his work on the painting, to the the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, Paris’s first anthropological museum. There, he had an epiphanic encounter with African and Oceanic art, which influenced the work’s ferocious anti-naturalism. It was also there that he likely encountered initial field studies by leading primatologists studying patterns of play in primates. Such studies reveal that Bonobos, who live in matriarchal clans, engage in frequent, promiscuous sexual play with members of all sexes, a practice linked to their ability to manage conflict and to their adaptability to change. (Behncke, 24-27). In the rapidly changing and uncertain environment of modern industrialization and urbanization, the artist was no doubt excited by the implications of this evolutionary lens on human behavior and used the work to provoke public conversation.

In this painting, the famous midwife of Marie de Médici is pictured demonstrating to a group of medical professionals a non-invasive prenatal test. Boursier (1563-1636) was a known scholar and educator. Her book on obstetrics was widely used by medical professionals in several European countries, and in her retirement from being a royal midwife, she traveled widely to demonstrate her common-sense based medical methods as portrayed in this work.

The Nativity, one of the artist’s most important devotional paintings, emphasizes the key roles of intimacy and affection in the human/divine relationship. In the foreground, a sculpted archway plots the stages of Mary’s gestation, from the self-pleasure of her Immaculate Conception to the post-birth bonding gaze with her baby, setting the stage for the scene at the center. There, Joseph is providing skin-to-skin contact to the infant Jesus, a typical example of the Pater Cutis et Cutis Contactu iconography. The grotesques of Sheela na gig at the base of the arches suggest that pagan traditions were still widespread in Northern Europe, despite the Church's efforts to curtail them.

The Birth of Venus Barbata (or “Bearded Venus”) depicts Venus arriving on the shore after their birth having emerged from the sea fully-grown. Among the Romans, Venus Barbata was an epithet of the goddess Venus, as they understood the divinity to be both male and female. The name “Venus” has a masculine root in the Roman language, and it was perceived that, at times, the goddess becomes the god and the goddess.

Many art historians who specialize in Italian Renaissance have found Neoplatonic interpretations of the painting, with the nude Venus representing the Neoplatonic form of divine love. For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: an earthly divinity arousing humans to physical love, and a heavenly divinity inspiring intellectual love. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. Thus, looking at Venus –the most beautiful of divinities –might at first raise in viewers a physical response, followed by lifting their minds towards the godly.

The composition, which includes the central nude figure, another figure to the side with an arm raised above the head of the first, and winged beings in attendance, would have reminded its Renaissance viewers of the traditional iconography of the Baptism of Christ, which marked the start of his ministry on earth.

This painting dates to the mid-1880s and depicts men engaged in the craft of domestic needlework. This painting was discovered in Provence along with a stack of private journals belonging to the French painter in which he wrote about the domestic tradition of working-class men entering masculine maturity by learning to embroider with the other men of their households. At times, his writing veers into the kind of romanticization of the “virilité” of the men doing this work that’s somewhat typical of the painter’s bourgeois ignorance of his proletariat subjects. Yet still, the painting is quite striking. In it, we see a boy peeking in at the older men deeply engaged in their needlework craft while smoking pipes; the boy is transfixed in his introduction to the manhood that awaits him. The artist later produced a series of similar paintings depicting men playing cards rather than quilting, perhaps switching to card-playing after having been admonished for revealing the overly private masculinity signified by domestic needlework.