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The New Arcimboldo Archive

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The Arcimboldo Challenge
Oh my word. There's plenty of material to work through there! Thank you very much to all contributors. It should keep me out of mischief for a while....well actually...not for long because I was idly making up anagrams of Arcimboldo when I came up with the idea of an Arcimboldo Challenge. The rules are simple. You
1.Think of an anagram of Arcimboldo
2.Make a pic that could possibly pass for an undiscovered Arcimboldo and put your anagram on it.
3.Include as many fetishes of Arcimboldo that you can think of'
Well it kept me out of mischief this cold and wet afternoon and here's my fake Arcimboldo (hosted externally)
Technical perfection! Erotic! But sexy underwear is definitely not a fetish of mine :nono:
Nevertheless: Great!
 
This illustrates very fine one of the technical problems in the beginning: The insufficient contrast resolution of the pc monitors at that time. I could not differentiate between the different shades of grey ;) - nowadays monitors reveal the deficiencies.
I reworked Morocco and turnd it into SouhernCross.
The text going along with SouthernCross was:

From the legend of Theresa of Avila:

As a young girl, she had read all the ancient tales of female Christian martyrs like Eulalia and Leocadia, Barbara and Juliana... She had always been seeking for the details of their cruel tortures. She had learned about the flogging and the iron hooks that had torn their naked skin, and about the torches they had been burned with... The young girl was so impressed by these tales of martyrdom, that she began to fantasize about leaving her parents, going to the pagan Moors and sharing a similar fate of torment and violation...
 
Heh! Just noticed Arcimboldo's new name. I guess you can go one step even further and become R.C. Mboldo without sacrificing the pronunciation much, @Arcimboldo. That way you can leave old Giuseppe completely alone and establish residency in Botswana or somewhere around there instead. :D
I decided to change the name in order not to get mixed up with the real artist Arcimboldo to often.
You know I am modest :jump1:
 
This illustrates very fine one of the technical problems in the beginning: The insufficient contrast resolution of the pc monitors at that time. I could not differentiate between the different shades of grey ;) - nowadays monitors reveal the deficiencies.
I reworked Morocco and turnd it into SouhernCross.
One of your greatest, at least for me! I think you had in mind young St Teresa (of Avila)'s dreams of being a martyr - she ran way from home to get on the ferry across the Straits, intending to provoke the Moors to oblige, but was stopped and taken back home. But she went on having erotic fantasies/ mystical visions all her sainted life!

PS I posted this before noticing your one above - at least I'd guessed right :)
 
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Lente has always been one of my favourites. It tells such a sad, cruel story. In fact, one of my very early stories was based on this render.

Crucified!

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Crucifixion day! The victims are led out to the whipping posts. Beside each post a heavy wooden patibulum is waiting. Soon each of the women will be nailed to one of those beams! They will hang there for 24 hours! Spectators watch from the shade of umbrellas, sipping cool drinks served by semi-naked slaves.

The victims are very different in appearance. Amina is a stunning African woman. Tall, slender with almost blue-black skin, she has full, round breasts and a firm, shapely bottom. Tanya is Russian. Blonde, pale skinned with small breasts and a strong, slender body. Her arse makes very male in the area instantly want to bugger her.

Amina is tied to the whipping post, her hands pulled high above her head, body stretched so that her toes just touch the ground. A heavy bullwhip swings, and the first screams rend the air. The lash seeks out the tender parts of her body as she twists, vainly trying to escape the blows. No part of her body escapes. Her back, belly, breasts and thighs are striped and raw under the punishment. Finally, the whipping stops! She hangs by her wrists, sobbing!

Tanya is next. She is frightened now! She is lashed to the post. Her cheek rests against the wood and she smells the smell of blood and sweat and fear. Amina is lying on the ground next to her patibulum. Sobbing! Tanya will be scourged. The nine tails of the whip slam the breath from her body, the ends curling around her. After the first blow her back looks as if it has been clawed by a giant cat! Red wheals stand out against her pale skin. Another blow lands. She has never felt such pain! After the third blow she finds her breath and starts screaming. She struggles and twists! Blow after blow lands. Her struggles have turned her around so that her back is to the post! Horrified, she sees Theseus swing his arm again, the lashes cracking across her breasts. Another blow, lower, across her belly and the front of her thighs! The final blow finds her breasts again! This part of the ordeal is over.

Each girl has her patibulum tied across her shoulders. They stagger to the top of the hill. Already their shoulders are cramping from the unnatural position of their arms, and they are not even hanging from them yet!

The patibulum is taken from Tanya’s shoulders and fixed to the upright. She will be nailed first. The patibulum is fastened to the upright. Tanja is made to lie down on the cross. The rough wood scrapes painfully against her raw back. Her arms are stretched out along the patibulum. Two men hold down each arm. Her feet are to be nailed next to each other. Theseus carefully positions her feet. More men hold them in place. Theseus selects a spike, picks up the heavy hammer, and walks over to her. Unusually, he will nail her feet first.

He places the heavy spike against the top of her foot, feeling for just the right spot. The hammer crashes down! She screams, convulses, as eight men struggle to hold her down. The pain is blinding! White agony! A second blow drives the spike through her foot and into the wood. Two more blows, and her foot is firmly nailed to the cross. She has managed to free her other foot, and it kicking wildly with it. Four men grab it and wrestle it into place. There is no need, now, to hold down the first foot. Through the agony, she feels the pressure of the spike against the other foot. Another blast of agony! Four blows and both her feet, her beautiful, delicate feet, are nailed to the cross. The men let her go! She is free, apart from the fact that her feet are nailed to a wooden beam! She sits up, wanting to soothe the pain in her feet. For the first time she sees the heads of the spikes, protruding from the tops of her feet. She looks at Theseus! Pleading, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Enjoy the show,” he says.

Sitting on her cross, she has perfect view of Amina, and of the two holes where their crosses will be planted. Wrapping her arms around her knees, fighting the waves of pain, she watches the rest of the show unfold before her.

Amina is taken to her cross to be nailed, fighting all the way. Her nailing is more conventional. Her right wrist is nailed first. The spike drives effortlessly through her wrist into the rough wood below. She fights furiously, her free arm and legs lashing at her tormentors. They struggle to subdue her, their hands slipping on her sweaty body. Finally, they manage to force the other arm into position, and the hammer smashes down on the head of the spike, driving it through flesh and bone and into the wood below. Amina’s body arches in agony, her legs kicking furiously at the men. Half a dozen of them manage to hold her legs down. She screams defiance until a single spike is driven through her crossed feet. She writhes in pain as a group of men grab her cross and drag it to the hole prepared for it. Her screams intensify as the cross is raised, and her weight is transferred to her nailed arms and feet. The cross thumps into the hole, jarring her whole body and drawing fresh screams. She screams constantly, writhing on the cross, each movement causing the nails to grate on the shattered bones of her wrists and feet.

Tanja watches from her ringside seat!

Amina hangs from the cross! Her beautiful black body is covered in sweat, the muscles rippling like snakes under the velvety skin as she moves, trying in vain to find a comfortable position. She starts the dance that will last for the next 24 hours!

Theseus walks over to Tanja. Her time has come! She lies back on the cross, placing her hands in position. Men move forward to hold her down, but Theseus motions them away. He places the spike on her wrist. The hammer swings. The spike goes through the flesh and into the wood. Her body heaves, she screams! Two more blows and the job is done. Her free hand instinctively grasps the nailed wrist as agony flares. She stares at the nailed wrist. Theseus watches. Mastering the pain, she slowly releases her wrist, straightens on the cross, and places the free wrist in position. “I am ready, master.” The last spike is hammered home!

Hanging on the cross is a new agony. She struggles to breathe, and every movement brings new pain to wrists, to shoulders, to feet. From her cross she can see Amina dancing her dance of pain. Her body twists and turns. Her eyes look pleadingly at the spectators, at Tanya, at her master. “Please let me down! Please! It hurts! It hurts! I’ll do anything! Please! You can fuck me as much as you like! Pleeeaaaaase!!!!!”

Hours pass, seeming like days to the tortured victims on the crosses. Lunch is served. Watchers stand with glasses of wine, watching the show. The women on the crosses are thirsty, they plead for a drink. Theseus comes toward Tanya’s cross, carrying a hammer and a wooden phallus. A cornu. Men raise her up as he nails it to the cross below her buttocks. When they release her, she sinks slowly onto the thick plug. She sighs as it slowly penetrates her arse, stretching it to the limit. It takes some of the strain off her arms and feet. She still has to rise up to breathe, each time buggering herself on the wooden shaft. She feels her orgasm build.

Amina gets a double cornu, shaped like a rhino’s horns. Her arse and pussy are spread wide by the invaders. The crowd cheers as she double fucks herself. The mother’s cornu is long and thick, spreading her arse widely. The sight of her wide, gaping cunt, flies crawling in to get at the cumsoaked depths and her arse stretched around the cornu bring on new scenes of passion. Many slavegirls, and boys, now have their arses filled with meaty cocks, fingers or arms.

The sun slides toward the horizon. Many watchers have drifted away, some are dozing, the women dance on their crosses. There is a long night ahead, and a long day tomorrow. Will they survive?
Thank you for the great story! I must admit, Lente is one of my own favorites, too.
 
Here is the originally sized picture of Lente and the text I added (I do not remember if Shiva or Lady Catherine gave me some linguistic help as they had done so often before).

They had forced her to carry the heavy timber from the governor's court to the bleak desert site. A deep hole was necessary to erect the wooden post, and they had made her digging it into the stony ground by herself with bare hands. Then they ordered her to go and collect dry twigs. But she could not walk any more. Once again they used the whip on her already torn skin. The whip did not enable her to walk, but to crawl for the twigs.

Some time or other they were satisfied by the height of the brushwood pile. They laid her down to the rough surface of the cross and started nailing her to the post...

* * * * *

While the nails had been driven through her feet, she had howled from unbearable pain. She expected her torturers to continue on her wrists, but they stopped unexpectedly.

Why don't you go on with my hands? she cried on an impulse of desperate defiance, while the tears ran down her face.
They laughed out loudly.

Not so impatient! Fastened like this, you are in a wonderful position to enjoy some more kisses from the whip first!

They tied her wrists together and attached the rope to the pole beneath her nailed feet. Once again the whiplashes smacked into her flesh and once again it felt like the skin was ripped from her back. She nearly lost consciousness. Finally they released the rope from her wrists... and moved back.

* * * * *

She was alone. Was she? Or did they hide behind those hills and watch her agony with sadistic pleasure? Probably they did. Probably they expected her to make rediculous attempts to pull out the nails with bare hands. No, she would not! But if they really intended to leave her in this position in the desert...? She shivered. She thought about the wolves, the jackals and the scorpions. And she thought about the ants... No, please, they could not leave her alone this way... on the ground!

She looked at the hole she had dug by her own hands and at the pile of brushwood. She was sure that had not been pointless. No, they would not leave her alone! They would come back. They would nail her hands to the wooden beam. They would raise the cross. She knew at that moment she would scream from irresistible pain like she had never screamed before. But that was not all she had to expect...

She glanced at the sign they had attached to the pole beneath her tortured feet: LENTE.
She was from Judaea, but she knew that Latin word. LENTE. Slowly...

She knew how the Romans used to intensify the punishment of captured rebels. More than once she had had the occasion to witness the inventive Roman mind. The real torture would start while she was already helplessly hanging from the cross. And it would be done very slowly. First they would use the whip systematically on the front of her body. Then they would punch her soft flesh with the blunt end of their spears. Later they would turn the spears and use the sharp tips on the most delicate parts of her body. At dusk they would place the brushwood at the base of the cross or attach the twigs to long sticks and set them on fire. And they would make her dance on the cross in the flickering light of the searing flames...

Later they would leave her alone. Finally. Alone with the whip marks, the stab wounds, the burns and the terrible pain in her hands and feet. Alone with thirst and exhaustion.

And with the vultures above her, she would constantly be facing the threatening eagle of the Roman Empire...
 

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Thank you for this wonderful drive down memory lane, @melissa! First we got @jedakk back, and now we got @Arcimboldo as well...it really does feel a little like the olden days right now!

About the early history of the Crux group, as one of the old-timers through the days of Onelist, eGroups (thanks for setting that sequence straight for me a while ago, @phlebas!), Yahoo, and now CF (both the Foundation and the Forums) I guess I'm also obliged to squeeze every bit of ancient lore out of the dustiest corners of my brain. But really, I'm a relative new-comer among the old-timers, and by the time I joined in 1998, the group was very much in shape and well under sail. For the real pioneer tales from the frontier, we would have to get in touch with old legends like Crux Commissa, MLC (Lady Catherine), Steve Leuck, Dr. Mabuse and, of course, Master of Nails.

Although I wasn't along for the ride from the very beginning, I do recall the first words about the group's creation when Crux Commissa was making rounds on the BDSM-themed Usenet newsgroups and shouting "hear ye hear ye" all over the place. I was then hanging out in the alt.story.bondage (ASB) newsgroup and had recently changed my penname from Sir Kevin X (or simply Sir Kevin) to Maha Shiva to specialize in stories with a decidedly darker hue, including some involving our favorite wooden apparatus. However, the idea of the Crux group initially did not appeal to me all that much, as I figured at the time: Well, what's the fun of having a group that deals with nothing else but naked women (and occasionally men) hanging on crosses? (Don't answer that, please! :D)

So one day after I posted another story featuring a damsel and a cross, I got a note from a total stranger who called herself Lady Catherine. Based on the stories I was posting she thought I was already "one of us," so she started talking about people and postings that I did not have the slightest idea about. Naturally, my reply to MLC could be summarized as one big loud "huh?"

And that's how I ended up here eventually. :)
It's great to puzzle and to assemble all these details from memory in our aging brains. I remember Old Cato's warm response on my first post in 1998; Lady Catherine was strict and severe in her role as an admin, but incredibly helpful to me (and I guess not only to me). There were Dr Mabuse, Shiva, Phlebas... I better stop the listing not to embarrass all the other wonderful members and contributors.
 
Technical perfection! Erotic! But sexy underwear is definitely not a fetish of mine :nono:
Nevertheless: Great!
Some people are just fussy! OK. I told the girl to go home and come back properly attired. This is the CruxForums after all. Next time she will be whipped.
uScjUlX.jpg
 
Well, here's a shot at Melissa's challenge, not meeting all her requirements, but it's a start ...

Calm, I brood ...
Agatha in original image size and the related text:


She looked down upon her body, and she saw that it was beautiful...

The thunderous roar of the audience in the arena grew louder and louder, drowning out the feeble prayers of her fellow Christians and the screams of pain. She heard the bloodthirsty crowd calling her name:

"Agatha! Agatha! ..."

She knew that everything was in order for her final ordeal. Her heart was pounding, sending a rush throughout her being - a rush of fear, shame, as well as desperation.

Once again she glanced at her tender breasts. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned and walked from the dark vault into the glaring brightness.

And she noticed that shame and fear had given way to pride, and a strange feeling of joy and pleasure...



We don't know exactly if the martyrdom of Saint Agatha took place in public in a Roman arena, if she was tied to a wooden cross, or what kind of tools were applied to her breasts...
 

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