A naked woman can trigger all kinds of feelings in a guy, from a nice tingle to a full-on erection. She can also evoke a variety of sexual responses, from curiosity to yearning and aggression.
During the Mannerist period, artists became free to depict nude women without any religious connotations. The graceful curves of this immodest Venus reflect this artistic trend.
Art History
The human body has been depicted in various ways throughout art history. The female nude, in particular, has been the subject of many paintings by artists such as Titian, Giorgione and Michelangelo. The female body has been used to convey a range of emotions and experiences including sensuality, torment and emotion. In addition, the female nude has been portrayed in a variety of artistic styles such as Expressionism and Surrealism.
Female nude art has been accepted in different societies and cultures to varying degrees. For example, in Renaissance Italy a number of nude paintings of women were made but only if they were part of a biblical scene or an allegory and if the body was completely veiled. Nonetheless, many painters of the period portrayed naked women as a symbol of purity and sanctity.
In fact, some of the most famous paintings of nude women are based on religious themes. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, for instance, is famous for its nude representation of the goddess in the sea foam. The painting, however, was painted before the radical wing of the Protestant movement led by Savonarola burned paintings that depicted sex and nudity in 1496.
By the late sixteenth century, however, the nude was becoming more acceptable if the image was a portrait of an individual or part of a mythological scene. This is probably the reason why Titian was able to paint his sensual Cupid and Venus, which is not only more explicit than other Renaissance nude paintings but also carries the allegory of love.
In the Victorian era, one of the most famous nude paintings was John William Waterhouse’s “Hylas and the Nymphs”. The painting depicts a cluster of bare nymphs alluring Hylas into the waters. The painting is a fine example of the Pre-Raphaelite movement’s interest in classical mythology and its focus on the beauty and allure of the natural world.
Goya
The Naked Maja (or “La maja desnuda”) is one of Goya’s most famous paintings and arguably the most controversial because of its realistic depiction of a reclining female nude. It challenged the traditional depictions of reclining women as divine or mistresses and instead created a new iconography for ordinary Spanish women. The painting inspired the likes of Edouard Manet and influenced other artists to explore their depictions of the body.
Francisco Goya was a painter of social and political commentary. His works reflect the turbulence of his time, with his mid-period focusing on subjects such as war and death. In a series of prints, he showed the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and in other paintings he explored the effects of death on individuals.
Goya’s later period saw the emergence of a darker side to his work that reflected the shadow sides of human nature. His etching series, Los Caprichos, which includes 80 engravings, satirized corruption in society and the Catholic Church. He also explored the horrors of insanity, and produced grotesque group portraits that were disturbingly naturalistic in their representation.
Towards the end of his life, he was disillusioned with the state of Spain and left Madrid for Bordeaux in France, where he died in 1828. While he was no longer working in the field of painting, his artistic legacy is still felt today. In fact, Goya has become a brand of food in the United States, with a number of Latin-inspired products available at grocery stores across the country. Don Prudencio Unanue and his wife Carolina started the Goya company in 1936 to capitalize on growing demand for high-quality Latin foods that were both healthy and delicious.
Courbet
Unlike his father, who hoped his son would enter a solid profession like law, Courbet chose to become an artist. Although he initially imitated the works of the old French, Spanish and Flemish masters, he soon began to develop his own style. He was drawn to the stark realities of ordinary life and especially the rural people around him in his native Franche-Comte region.
He became one of the leaders of a new movement called Realism that would influence the Impressionists and other later artists. Courbet’s erotic nudes, hunting scenes and landscapes reflected his intense interest in the human condition. He often subverted Academic Classicism in ways that promoted his own vision and inspired other modernists. For example, in Burial at Ornans, he defies the convention that nude women should be slender with porcelain skin. Here his woman is a full-figured 45-year-old who seems almost oblivious to the fact that she has varicose veins protruding from her flesh.
Courbet also challenged idealization in his paintings by using thick, textured paint that spoke as loudly as the subject itself. His technique of applying paint with the palette knife, and even his thumb, shocked conservative viewers accustomed to smoothed and pristine finishes.
In 1853 he submitted this painting to the Paris Salon along with another large canvas titled The Artist’s Studio. Both were rejected, and Courbet set up his own private exhibition adjacent to the official Exposition Universelle in 1855. This was the first time that an artist had mounted a private show to counter the power of the official salons. Courbet’s paintings sparked a revolution in taste and subject matter that changed art forever. He was a fervent supporter of socialist ideals and did not hesitate to depict the poverty, misery and suffering that he saw in his surroundings.
Impressionists
Since the Middle Ages, artists have portrayed women’s naked bodies in thousands of ways. Often religious and sacred, sometimes libertine and uninhibited, the female nude has fascinated artists as much as it has been a source of controversy.
Edouard Manet’s 1863 paintings Olympia and Dejeuner sur l’herbe broke from the academic norms of his day by depicting modern women in a state of undress whose connotations were more explicitly sexual than traditional classical nudes. They became scandalous, and the ensuing legal battles between Manet and the French government helped to shape the Impressionist movement.
Although the Impressionists’ styles varied greatly, they were united by a desire to break from the overbearing conventions of the Salon and to capture the fleeting optical impressions of daily life. Their first show in 1874 (which Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise earned them the initially derisive nickname “Impressionists”) was held outside of the official Paris art exhibition halls and the group developed its own commercial co-operative to support themselves.
Edgar Degas’s nude paintings – especially The Tub of 1886 and The Dancers – are considered among the most masterful of the Impressionist period. His use of various techniques and his interest in capturing the body’s natural motions helped to define this new style of painting.
Throughout the 20th century, artists continued to explore the beauty and vulnerability of the female form. During his lifetime, Otto Dix was accused of being a pornographer, psychopath and even a demon due to his fascination with depicting tortured women and prostitutes in their most vulnerable state. But the naked woman was at the heart of his work and a symbol of existential anguish. This was true of many other 20th-century painters, including Paul Cezanne and Gustav Klimt, who used nudes to convey their emotional turmoil.
Botticelli
Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano dei Filipepi) was a Florentine painter who worked on both religious and secular commissions, especially for the wealthy Medici family in Florence. His paintings represent a transition between the Medieval worldview and the more logical views that would blossom into the Enlightenment a few hundred years later.
Botticelli’s work is often characterized by its emphasis on beauty and the female form, which was seen as a symbol of fertility. His Primavera, currently on display at the Uffizi in Florence, and the Birth of Venus are both examples of this. Rather than simply depicting the goddesses in a naturalistic fashion, though, Botticelli often distorted their forms to suit his artistic vision.
He also incorporated elements of Greek art into his paintings, which helped to further elevate their aesthetic appeal. For instance, the flowing hair of the naked Venus is reminiscent of classical Greek sculptures. Similarly, the floating flowers and seas are reminiscent of ancient Greek vase painting.
Like his contemporaries, Botticelli was a Renaissance man, a member of the intellectual movement that encouraged the study of classical literature and philosophy, and attempted to move Christianity closer to what it had been in the past. He was also a politician, and participated in the 1478 conspiracy that resulted in the death of Giuliano de’ Medici.
His most famous works include the Primavera and the Birth of Venus. These depict mythological subjects, which embodied the values that he and his colleagues espoused through the Humanism movement. Nevertheless, his paintings were not without controversy; there is an accusation in the Florentine archives that he “kept a boy”, which could be taken as a homosexual allegation at the time.