Across Eurasia there have been found thousands of the so-called “Venus-figurines” from the Stone Age, which are faceless voluptuous women, often with a distinct triangle between their legs. On the carved Venus from Laussel (right) it seems as though she has natural pubic hair, but otherwise it is possible that the triangles on the Venus figurines merely represent generic female genitals, with no suggestion to whether they have natural pubic hair or not.

Left: Venus of Lespugue, approx. 24.000 BC .

Slimmer female figurines, possibly representing deities, are also significant for the Middle East in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Their genitals are often just generic, represented by a triangle, but there are also examples which could imply natural pubic hair.

Left: Female terrakotta figure, from a grave in Ur, Iraq, ca. 3500BC. Middle: Female ivory figure, from Berrseba, Israel, ca. 3000 BC. Right: Female figure in silver and gold, from Hasanoglan, Turkey, ca. 2000 BC.

From ancient Egypt there have been found bronze scrapers, papyrus scrolls describing how to remove body hair by the help of harsh chemical mixtures, and depictions of male adult(!) circumcision show men with bald crotches. However, it seems as though women in the New Kingdom period did not depilate their genitals. Above, nearly nude servants groom their mistress.Painting from tomb number 38, New Kingdom, ca. 1410 BC.

Pubic hair is also carefully painted on these wooden figures from the New Kingdom period.

Left: Wooden figure of a servant girl, New Kingdom, ca. 1370 BC.Right: Wooden female figure, New Kingdom, 13th century BC.

Natural female pubic hair was not, however, reserved for servants or the lower class. The adolescent granddaughters of the high-ranking official Inerka portrayed in the tomb painting above all have dark pubic triangles.

Painting from the tomb of high-ranking official Inerka, at Deir al-Medina, New Kingdom, ca. 1150.

In ancient Greece, male nude statues are generally without pubic hair until the beginning of the Classical period (ca. 480BC), where it starts to appear on some notorious statues like the Tyrannicides. As the decades pass, pubic hair becomes the new normal around the middle of the fifth century and thus the most famous male statues of the Classical period have natural pubic hair. This tendency continues in the Hellenistic period under Macedonian rule in the following centuries. In vase painting men are painted both with and without pubic hair.Left: Roman copy of Tyrannicides by Kritios and Nesiotes, ca. 477BC Middle: Roman copy of Doryphoros by Polykleitos, ca. 450-400 BC Right: Barberini Faun, late 3rd century BC

Whereas the male nude was somewhat an artistic trademark for the ancient Greeks, they were generally reluctant at depicting undressed women before the fifth century. From written sources as well as art it is known that Athenian women did practise partial pubic depilation (by plucking or scorching the hairs with a lamp) in the fifth century, whereas women from Sparta allegedly did not. Regarding the pubic hair on women from the other Greek city states, information is sparse.

Left: Detail from vase by Oltos, 525-500BC Right: Detail from vase by Shuvalov painter, around 440-410BC

Just like their Greek contemporaries, sculptures of men from the Apennine Peninsula (area of modern Italy) made before the fifth century BC have bald groins. This baldness can equally well be a result of lack of technical skill, religious considerations or actual depilation. In Etruscan tombs (from the sixth century BC and onwards), paintings depict men both with and without natural pubic hair.

Wrestler, from Tomba degli Auguri at Tarquinia, ca. 540 BC.

Naked men in Roman art were usually depicted with pubic hair and certain Roman authors claimed that depilation of male body hair was only fitting for homosexuals. It could, however, be pointed out that the respective amounts of male pubic hair depicted seem very modest in comparison with what is generally expected of more contemporary Mediterranean men.

The punishment of Ixion, fresco from House of the Vettii, Pompeii, made approx. 60-79 AD.

Roman art depicts (young) women as having bald crotches. The Latin poet Martial from the first century AD considered the practice as a prerogative for young women only and ridiculed depilation in women over a certain age.

The Three Graces, fresco painting from Pompeii, before year 79AD.

Whether it is the art of the fallen West Roman Empire or the Byzantine art, there are next to no genitals shown in the Christian art of the first millennium AD. They are mainly covered by leaves, hands and in the example above coloured bands, why it is hard to conclude anything about pubic hair. .Adam and Eve from ceiling of the Tomb of the Good Shepherd, Rome, first half of 3rd century AD.

In the beginning of the second millennium AD, the (churchly) artists are still reluctant to show the genitals uncovered, but when they do natural pubic hair is shown quite often.

Adam and Eve, from the ceiling of the St Michael monastery at Hildesheim, end of 12th century.

Islamic artists depicted Adam and Eve as covered up as those of Europe, but if they had chosen to show them as God had made them, the pair might still be lacking pubic hair as the Hadith proclaims that married women should depilate their private parts once a week, widows and virgins once a month.

Painting of Adam and Eve from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), Iran, around 1294-1299.

Artists of the early Medieval period did not have many other possibilities to depict naked people than the theme of Adam and Eve. Only later in the Medieval period were souls waiting to be condemned on the Day of Judgment or suffering in hell often depicted as naked and thus without apparent social markers.

God creates Eve, from Byzantian style mosaic in dome in San Marco , Venice. 13th century.

Especially in sculptural works of the Medieval period, genitals are often hidden by awkward poses, covering hands and clingy plants, but here and there natural pubic hair can be determined.

Adam and Eve, first pillar at the church at Duomo, Orvieto. Ca. 1310.

In the Italian republics, where the Renaissance movement began and then spread itself over the European continent, motives with antique mythological content instead of Christian began to appear. Many Renaissance artists displayed the same modesty with regards to showing pubic hair as the Christian artists, although there were exceptions, such as the example above.

Venus and lovers, Maestro della Presa di Taranto o Maestro di Ladislao di Durazzo, ca. 1440.

Some of the most famous Medieval depictions of Adam and Eve have their genitals covered with hands and leaves, but there is still no doubt that the figures have natural pubic hair.

Left: Adam and Eve, from the Gent altarpiece, Jan van Eyck, 1432. Right: Adam and Eve, Albrecht Dürer, 1504.

While female pubic hair could be seen in some paintings from the late Medieval period, it was still somewhat rare to show it in sculptural works. Male pubic hair was more common and could even be seen sticking out when genitals were covered with a leaf for modesty.

Left: David by Michelangelo, 1500-1504. Right: Wooden sculpture of Adam and Eve, Hans Wydyz the older, ca. 1510.

The art of the 16th century displayed more pubic hair than before. For some artists, like Hans Baldung, it was a common trait of his style, while others did like Giorgione and differentiated according to the motive. Thus his mythological Venus covers her sex with a hand, while the breastfeeding contemporary woman displays natural pubic hair.Left: Detail from Thunder, Giorgione, 1505; Middle: Venus asleep, Giorgione, 1510. Right: Death and the Lady, Hans Baldung, 1518-1520

The Baroque style of art , which started out in Italy around year 1600 and then spread out over Europe, was often sweet, rosy –cheeked and pompous, and natural pubic hair with its bold sexual association did not really fit in. Only here and there a glimpse or perhaps shadow of pubic hair can be seen .

Left: Ratto di Proserpina, Gianlorenzo Bernini, 1621-1622. Right: Detail from Danaa, Rembrandt Hermansz van Rijn, ca. 1636.

Although there was not much visible pubic hair in the art of the Baroque period, it did not mean that real-life women were necessarily hairless. On the example above Marie Antoinette, the trendsetter of the period as the queen of France, is depicted with natural pubic hair on her mons Veneris.

Satirical drawing of Marie Antoinette, drawn by anonymous in 1791 (British museum).

The French revolution in 1789 came as a political and social wake-up call for France and the rest of Europe, and also the art of the 19th century was in many ways different from the sweet style of the previous centuries. Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt opened for the Western fascination of the Middle East and thus the art style of Orientalism with its many nude harem ”slaves”. While paintings like those of Ingres’ were received without raised eyebrows, Gustave Courbert caused a scandal with his realistic rendition of a nude woman’ s genitals with its natural pubic hair.Left: The origin of the world, Gustave Courbert, 1866. Right: The Turkish bath by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1862

The artists of the 19th century often used the trick of depicting the female sex shadowy, thus leaving it up to the viewer to decide if he or she saw pubic hair or not – which might have saved them from causing public offense like Courbert with the previous painting. On Gerome’s painting above the effect is interesting as the former statue Galatea is literally in the middle of turning into a woman of flesh and blood. Does Pygmalion’s dream woman have pubic hair or not?

Jean-Leon Gerome, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1885

Nuda Veritas, by Gustav Klimt, 1899

LITERATURE:

Cosmetics in Roman Antiquity: Substance, Remedy, Poison (2009) by K. Olson in The Classical World, Vol. 102, No. 3, pp. 291-310

Raising Hair (2004) by A. Rosenthal in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, Hair, pp. 1-16

Genital Phobia and Depilation (1982) by M. Kilmer in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 102, pp. 104-112

The Clothed Image: Picture and Performance (1971) by A. Hollander in New Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 3, Performances in Drama, the Arts, and Society, pp. 477-493