If you’ve ever wondered how people acquired pornography before the internet or printing press came along, you can look no further than Gustave Courbet's The Sleepers.

Although, those who were only satisfied with something that looked like the real deal wouldn't have been very happy with the nudes that existed before Courbet came along. In accordance with his title as a Realist, Courbet painted this scene of post-coital bliss as lifelike as he could, complete with every wrinkle, pucker, and curve of a realistic naked body.

One identity of this drowsy duo is known: Joanna Hiffernan (”Jo” for short) is the rightmost woman with the reddish-blonde curls. She was an artist, a sought-after model, and one side of a love triangle between the American artist James Abbot McNeill Whistler and Courbet himself. Whistler—best known for his ethereal landscape scenes—painted a few angelic renditions of Jo dressed in a flowing white ensemble while Courbet took a slightly different approach in his depictions of the same red-headed beauty (hint: less virginal white dresses and infinitely more birthday suits)

Courbet painted not one but two nude portraits featuring Jo: The Sleepers and the 100% NSFW piece, Origin of the World.  He evidently took such a liking to her during this first sitting that he couldn't stop himself from coming back for an extremely close-up, photo-realistic portrait of her genitalia. Needless to say, this threw a wrench into Jo’s relationship with Whistler.

Courbet was a bit of an adventure junkie. He thrived on shock-and-awe and enjoyed the intense reactions that his exceedingly provocative artwork garnered. Take The Sleepers, for example; it was one of the very first depictions of borderline pornographic lesbian lovemaking and caused quite a clamor in the art world when it debuted. The painting was the subject of a police report and was banned from being exhibited until 1988—over one-hundred years after its inception. It wasn't all police and scandal, however. The Sleepers inspired other artists to experiment with the same theme and ultimately mitigated taboos associated with lesbianism at the time. Sounds like a win to me.

I really want this image to not be perverted, buuut it was probably created to fulfill some fantasy (lack of access to pornography, remember?). It was painted for a wealthy art collector, Khalil Bey, who also commissioned the famously risque Origin of the World, for his burgeoning collection of erotic art. Actually, he originally commissioned a different (but no less erotic) scene from Courbet but received The Sleepers instead when his first request was unavailable. I can't imagine he was disappointed.