Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum is exhibiting a rare item recently acquired on auction − a nearly 200-year-old condom bearing an explicit print representing a nun and three clergymen.
The Rijksmuseum’s Print Room collection holds some 750,000 prints, drawings and photographs but this is the first example in the collection of a print on a condom, according to the BBC.
The artefact, dating back to about 1830, was bought by the museum at an auction last year, and is part of an exhibition on 19th Century prostitution and sexuality. Prints, drawings and photographs also form part of the display.
The condom is thought to be made of a sheep’s appendix.
Rijksmuseum curator Joyce Zelen is quoted as saying that after acquiring the artefact, analysis using UV light indicated that the condom had never been used.
The condom is believed to have been a”luxury souvenir” from a fancy brothel in France. Only two such objects are known to have survived.
The museum said the unusual item “embodies both the lighter and darker sides of sexual health, in an era when the quest for sensual pleasure was fraught with fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases – especially syphilis”.
[Image: Rijksmuseum]