'' (made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE) The nude dates to the beginning of art with the female figures called
Venus figurines from the
Late Stone Age. In early historical times similar images represented fertility deities. When surveying the literature on the nude in art, there are differences between defining nakedness as the complete absence of clothing versus other states of undress. In early Christian art, particularly in references to images of Jesus, partial dress (a loincloth) was described as nakedness.
Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt '',
First Babylonian Dynasty (c. 1800 BCE) Nude images in
Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt reflect the attitudes toward nudity in these societies. In
Ancient Egypt the nude was depicted in sculptures as well as paintings and even hieroglyphs. The god
min, the god of male fertility, is depicted nude when written as a hieroglyph. There are also nude images used as a distinction of class as often-times lower class citizens and slaves were made to do strenuous labor and hence were often nude. At the time, being naked in social situations was a source of great embarrassment for anyone with higher social status this was not due to the connection between nudity and sexual impropriety, but rather it being indicative of low status or disgrace. Non-sexual, or functional nudity was common in early civilizations due to the climate. Children were generally naked until puberty, and public baths were attended nude by mixed gender groups. Those with low status not only slaves might be naked or, when clothed, would disrobe when necessary for strenuous work. There is also evidence of nudity being used as a form of entertainment. Women often would be shown partially nude and dressed very minimally in what we would consider an early form of lingerie and these women would have been dancers, musicians, or acrobats. However, her bird-feet and accompanying owls have suggested to some a connection with
Lilitu, though seemingly not the usual demonic Lilitu. {{gallery | height=180 | title=The nude in Babylon and Egypt | File:Statuette Goddess Louvre AO20127.jpg|Babylonian statuette of a goddess (
Astarte or
Ishtar) | File:Female topless egyption dancer on ancient ostrakon.jpg|Ancient Egyptian depiction of topless dancer with elaborate hairstyle and hoop earrings in gymnastic backbend, on ostrakon (potsherd). | File:Ägyptischer Maler um 1400 v. Chr. 001.jpg|Dancers and Flutists, Thebes (c. 1400 BCE)
Ancient Greece Nudity in Greek life was the exception in the ancient world. What had begun as a male initiation rite in the eighth century BCE became a "costume" in the
Classical period. Complete nudity separated the civilized Greeks from the "barbarians" including Hebrews, Etruscans, and Gauls. The earliest
Greek sculpture, from the early
Bronze Age Cycladic civilization consists mainly of stylized male figures who are presumably nude. This is certainly the case for the
kouros, a large standing figure of a male nude that was the mainstay of
Archaic Greek sculpture. These first realistic sculptures of nude males depict nude youths who stand rigidly posed with one foot forward. By the 5th century BCE, Greek sculptors' mastery of anatomy resulted in greater naturalness and more varied poses. An important innovation was
contrapposto—the asymmetrical posture of a figure standing with one leg bearing the body's weight and the other relaxed. An early example of this is
Polykleitos' sculpture
Doryphoros (). The Greek goddesses were initially sculpted with drapery rather than nude. The first free-standing, life-sized sculpture of an entirely nude woman was the
Aphrodite of Cnidus created –340 BCE by
Praxiteles. The female nude became much more common in the later
Hellenistic period. In the convention of
heroic nudity, gods and heroes were shown nude, while ordinary mortals were less likely to be so, though athletes and warriors in combat were often depicted nude. The nudes of Greco-Roman art are conceptually perfected ideal persons, each one a vision of health, youth, geometric clarity, and organic equilibrium. Kenneth Clark considered idealization the hallmark of true nudes, as opposed to more descriptive and less artful figures that he considered merely naked. His emphasis on idealization points up an essential issue: seductive and appealing as nudes in art may be, they are meant to stir the mind as well as the passions. {{gallery | height=180 | title=Ancient Greek sculpture | File:Kouros anavissos.jpg|
Kroisos Kouros () | File:Hermes di Prassitele, at Olimpia, front 2.jpg|
Hermes bearing the infant
Dionysus, by Praxiteles | File:NAMA X15118 Marathon Boy 3.JPG|The
Marathon Boy (4th century BCE) bronze statue, possibly by Praxiteles | File:0002MAN-Hermes.jpg|
Hermes, possibly by
Lysippos | File:Diadoumenos-Atenas.jpg|
Diadumenos, by
Polykleitos | File:Apollon_Mantoue_N689.jpg|
Apollo, by Polykleitos | File:Aphrodite Braschi Glyptothek Munich 258.jpg|So-called
Venus Braschi by Praxiteles, type of the
Knidian Aphrodite Asian art Non-Western traditions of depicting nudes come from
India and Japan, but the nude does not form an important aspect of
Chinese art. Temple sculptures and cave paintings, some very explicit, are part of the Hindu tradition of the value of sexuality, and as in many warm climates partial or complete nudity was common in everyday life, or at least court life, in
ancient India. Many deities and sacred figures are shown partially or entirely nude. Many images also show figures in very thin clinging fabrics, that are effectively nudes; paint may have originally made the difference between clothed and unclothed areas more clear. Nude sculptures are found at Buddhist sites such as
Bharhut,
Sanchi and Hindu ones such as
Khajuraho,
Konark, etc. The
Muslim invasions of India greatly reduced the amount of the body displayed in both real life and art. Japan had a tradition of mixed communal bathing that existed
until very recently, and was often portrayed in manuscript illustrations, and later
ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings. In the early twentieth century, artists in the Arab world used nudity in works that have been claimed to address their emergence from colonialism into a modern world. {{gallery | height=180 | title=The nude in Asian art | File:Khajuraho-Vishvanath Temple erotic detal4.jpg|Kandariya Mahadev Temple in Khajuraho, India (1050) | File:Dancing Krishna, India, Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, Chola dynasty, 14th century, bronze, HAA.JPG|
Bala Krishna dancing (14th century) | File:Kitagawa Utamaro - BATHING IN COLD WATER - Google Art Project.jpg|
Bathing woman (c. 1753),
Kitagawa Utamaro | File:Indischer Maler von 1775 001.jpg|Woman putting on her clothes (1775), unknown Indian artist | File:Hashiguchi Yuami.jpg|
Yuami (1915), Hashiguchi Goyô | File:Pain by Kahlil Gibran, 1923.jpg|
Pain, illustration for
The Prophet by
Kahlil Gibran (1923) | File:Wisdom-Impression-Sentiment-Art-by-Kuroda-Seiki-1899.png|
Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment by
Kuroda Seiki (c. 1899)
Middle Ages Early Middle Ages Christian attitudes cast doubt on the value of the human body, and the Christian emphasis on chastity and celibacy further discouraged depictions of nakedness, even in the few surviving Early Medieval survivals of secular art. Completely unclothed figures are rare in medieval art, the notable exceptions being
Adam and Eve as recorded in the
Book of Genesis and the damned in
Last Judgement scenes anticipating the
Sistine Chapel renderings. With these exceptions, the ideal forms of Greco-Roman nudes became largely lost, transformed into symbols of shame and sin, weakness and defenselessness. This was true not only in Western Europe, but also in
Byzantine art. Increasingly, Christ was shown largely naked in scenes of his Passion, especially the
Crucifixion, and even when glorified in heaven, to allow him to display the wounds his sufferings had involved. The
Nursing Madonna and
naked "Penitent Mary Magdalene", as well as the infant Jesus, whose
penis was sometimes emphasized for theological reasons, are other exceptions with elements of nudity in medieval religious art.
Late Middle Ages By the late medieval period female nudes intended to be attractive edged back into art, especially in the relatively private medium of the
illuminated manuscript, and in classical contexts such as the
Signs of the Zodiac and illustrations to
Ovid. The shape of the female "Gothic nude" was very different from the classical ideal, with a long body shaped by gentle curves, a narrow chest and high waist, small round breasts, and a prominent bulge at the stomach. Male nudes tended to be slim and slight in figure, probably drawing on apprentices used as models, but were increasingly accurately observed.
Renaissance '' by
Sandro Botticelli, c. 1484–1486 During the Renaissance, interest in the nude body in art was being rekindled after a thousand years. Toward the end of Greco-Roman antiquity, Christian doctrines of celibacy, chastity, and the devaluation of the flesh led to the declining interest of nudes for patrons, and thus for artists. Since the end of the ancient classical period, the unclothed body was only depicted in rare instances like renderings of Adam and Eve. Now, with the rise of
Renaissance humanism, Renaissance artists were relishing opportunities to depict the unclothed body. The reinvigoration of classical culture in the Renaissance restored the nude to art.
Donatello made two statues of the Biblical hero
David, a symbol for the
Republic of Florence: his first (in marble, 1408–1409) shows a clothed figure, but his second, probably of the 1440s, is the first freestanding statue of a nude since antiquity, several decades before
Michelangelo's massive
David (1501–1504). Nudes in Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling reestablished a tradition of male nudes in depictions of Biblical stories; the subject of the martyrdom of the near-naked
Saint Sebastian had already become highly popular. The monumental female nude returned to Western art in 1486 with
The Birth of Venus by
Sandro Botticelli for the
Medici family, who also owned the classical
Venus de' Medici, whose pose Botticelli adapted.
Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) is considered by art historians to have been a pivotal figure in the resurgence of nudes in art because of his love of the ancient classical world and how he incorporated classical principles of form into his creations. He is not the first to use classical influences in his work. However, few painters before him did this to the conspicuous degree and quality to which he did. He is known as a master of form, and his nudes are noteworthy because his style is influenced by his study of ancient classical sculpture and his knowledge of ancient classical Greek and Roman culture. The drawing of
St. James Led to His Execution demonstrates that, early on, Mantegna did anatomical nude sketches in preparation for the
Ovetari Chapel frescoes. This is the earliest known drawing by the artist. The
Dresden Venus of
Giorgione (c. 1510), also drawing on classical models, showed a reclining female nude in a landscape, beginning a long line of famous paintings including the
Venus of Urbino (
Titian, 1538), and the
Rokeby Venus (
Diego Velázquez, c. 1650). Although they reflect the proportions of ancient statuary, such figures as Titian's
Venus and the Lute Player and
Venus of Urbino highlight the sexuality of the female body rather than its ideal geometry. These works inspired countless reclining female nudes for centuries afterwards. In addition to adult male and female figures, the classical depiction of
Eros became the model for the naked Christ child.
Raphael in his later years is usually credited as the first artist to consistently use female models for the drawings of female figures, rather than studio apprentices or other boys with breasts added, who were previously used. Michelangelo's suspiciously boyish
Study of a Kneeling Nude Girl for The Entombment (
Louvre, c. 1500), which is usually said to be the first nude female
figure study, predates this and is an example of how even figures who would be shown clothed in the final work were often worked out in nude studies, so that the form under the clothing was understood. The nude
figure drawing or figure study of a
live model rapidly became an important part of artistic practice and training, and remained so until the 20th century.
17th and 18th centuries {{gallery | height=180 | title=Baroque and Rococo In
Baroque art, the continuing fascination with classical antiquity influenced artists to renew and expand their approach to the nude, but with more naturalistic, less idealized depictions, perhaps more frequently working from live models. Both genders are represented; the male in the form of heroes such as Hercules and Samson, and female in the form of Venus and the Three Graces.
Peter Paul Rubens, who with evident delight painted women of generous figure and radiant flesh, gave his name to the adjective
Rubenesque. While adopting the conventions of mythological and Biblical stories, Rembrandt's nudes were less idealized, and painted from life. In the later Baroque or
Rococo period, a more decorative and playful style emerged, exemplified by
François Boucher's
Venus Consoling Love, likely commissioned by
Madame de Pompadour.
Early modern Goya's
Nude Maja represent a break with the classical, showing a particular woman of his time, with pubic hair and a look directed at the viewer, rather than an allusion to nymphs or goddesses. In the 19th century the
Orientalism movement added another reclining female nude to the possible subjects of European paintings, the odalisque, a slave or harem girl. One of the most famous was
The Grande Odalisque painted by
Ingres in 1814. The annual glut of paintings of idealized nude women in the
Paris Salon was satirized by
Honoré Daumier in an 1864 lithograph with the caption "This year Venuses again... always Venuses!... as if there really were women built like that!" While Europe accepted the nude in art, America was restrictive of sexuality, which sometimes included criticism or censorship of painting, even those that depicted classical or biblical subjects. In the later nineteenth century, academic painters continued with classical themes, but were challenged by the Impressionists. While the composition is compared to Titian and Giogione, Édouard Manet shocked the public of his time by painting nude women in contemporary situation in his ''
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863); and although the pose of his Olympia (1865) is said to derive from the Venus of Urbino by Titian, the public saw a prostitute. Gustave Courbet similarly earned criticism for portraying in his Woman with a Parrot'' a naked prostitute without vestige of goddess or nymph. Edgar Degas painted many nudes of women in ordinary circumstances, such as taking a bath. Auguste Rodin challenged classical canons of idealization in his expressively distorted Adam. With the invention of photography, artists began using the new medium as a source for paintings,
Eugène Delacroix being one of the first. For
Lynda Nead, the female nude is a matter of containing sexuality; in the case of the classical art history view represented by Kenneth Clark, this is about idealization and de-emphasis of overt sexuality, while the modern view recognizes that the human body is messy, unbounded, and problematical. If a virtuous woman is dependent and weak, as was assumed by the images in classical art, then a strong, independent woman could not be portrayed as virtuous.
Late modern Although both the Academic tradition and Impressionists lost their cultural supremacy at the beginning of the twentieth century, the nude remained although transformed by the ideas of
modernism. The idealized Venus was replaced by the woman intimately depicted in private settings, as in the work of
Egon Schiele. The simplified modern forms of
Jean Metzinger,
Amedeo Modigliani,
Gaston Lachaise and
Aristide Maillol recall the original goddesses of fertility more than Greek goddesses. In early abstract paintings, the body could be fragmented or dismembered, as in Picasso's ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' or his structuralist and Cubist nudes, but there are also abstracted versions of classical themes, such as
Henri Matisse's dancers and bathers.
Suzanne Valadon was one of relatively few female artists in the early 20th century to paint female nudes, as well as male nudes. In 1916, she painted
Nude Arranging her Hair, which depicts a woman carrying out a mundane task in a frank, un-sexualised and non-erotic way. Some critics, however, see the Woman series as
misogynistic. Other New York artists of this period retained the figure as their primary subject.
Alice Neel painted nudes, including her own self-portrait, in the same straightforward style as clothed sitters, being primarily concerned with color and emotional content.
Philip Pearlstein uses unique cropping and perspective to explore the abstract qualities of nudes. As a young artist in the 1950s, Pearlstein exhibited both abstracts and figures, but it was de Kooning that advised him to continue with figurative work.
Contemporary '' (1995) "I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."–
Lucian Freud Lucian Freud was one of a small group of painters which included
Francis Bacon who came to be known as "The School of London", creating figurative work in the 1970s when it was unfashionable. However, by the end of his life his works had become icons of the
Postmodern era, depicting the human body without a trace of idealization, as in his series working with an
obese model. One of Freud's works is entitled "Naked Portrait", which implies a realistic image of a particular unclothed woman rather than a conventional nude. In Freud's obituary in
The New York Times, it is stated: His "stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art". Around 1970, from feminist principles,
Sylvia Sleigh painted a series of works reversing stereotypical artistic themes by featuring naked men in poses usually associated with women. The paintings of
Jenny Saville include family and self-portraits among other nudes; often done in extreme perspectives, attempting to balance realism with abstraction; all while expressing how a woman feels about the female nude.
Lisa Yuskavage's nude figures painted in a nearly academic manner constitute a "parody of art historical nudity and the male obsession with the female form as object".
John Currin is another painter whose work frequently reinterprets historic nudes.
Cecily Brown's paintings combine figurative elements and abstraction in a style reminiscent of de Kooning. The end of the twentieth century saw the rise of new media and approaches to art, although they began much earlier. In particular
installation art often includes images of the human body, and performance art frequently includes nudity. "Cut Piece" by
Yoko Ono was first performed in 1964 (then known as a "
happening"). Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting away her clothing until she was nearly naked. Several contemporary performance artists such as
Marina Abramović,
Vanessa Beecroft and
Carolee Schneemann use their own nude bodies or other performers in their work. The male nude also became a subject of explicit artistic inquiry in this period.
Andy Warhol's
Sex Parts series (1977–78), a portfolio of six screenprints depicting male genitalia, occupied an uneasy position between fine art and pornography; Warhol referred to the subjects in his diaries as "landscapes," and according to studio manager Vincent Fremont, "the galleries were scared to show them." The series has since been interpreted as a significant affirmation of Warhol's homosexuality, and is held in the permanent collection of The Andy Warhol Museum. Russian-American photographer
Alexander Kargaltsev's
Asylum (2012) presented large-format nude portraits of gay Russian men who had sought political refuge in the United States. Curator Ivan Savvine described the subjects as "not nude but naked", consciously invoking Kenneth Clark's distinction, because "they had the courage to shed the many layers of fear and come out to the world uncovered, vulnerable, yet proud." ==Issues==