The female nude figure has been an enduring subject in art. Whether the figure is religious and sacred or Libertine, it has inspired artists to express various ideas and beliefs about women.
Human behaviorist and bestselling author Desmond Morris explores the female body and how it has been portrayed in different works of art.
Art History
The human body has been one of the main themes throughout art history. The depiction of nudes, however, has been a particularly controversial topic. The female nude is a genre of painting that has been used in numerous works, including masterpieces such as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Courbet’s Origin of the World or Modigliani’s Reclining Nude. In the case of female nudes, artists have tended to depict them as erotic icons, using idealized forms that stray away from the realistic appearance of the actual body and are instead an expression of idealism.
This tendency to depict the female nude as a symbol of eroticism is evident from the very beginnings of art history. In prehistoric times, images of women in full nudity are found in cave paintings and rock art. Unlike modern times, when the depiction of naked women is seen as a taboo, in those days it was perfectly acceptable to immortalize the human body in all its sensual details.
It was the Italian Renaissance that really introduced a more pronounced stylization of the female nude. The Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is considered the inventor of the female nude. He portrayed the nymphs of the classical mythological cycles in all their naked glory. In the Birth of Venus, the naked Goddess of Love reveals her sex appeal while also expressing her divinity. The elongated forehead, the drawn coiffure and the perfectly rounded breasts are typical of the era and express the idealized form.
During the following centuries, depicting the female nude continued to be an important theme in European art. It was especially popular in the Baroque period. The reclining nude became a popular motif. It was often referred to as an odalisque, a term that relates to the female slaves in Turkish harems. The painters of this era included Matisse, Ingres, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
The female nude was also a favorite subject for the Impressionists, who tried to capture the natural beauty of the human body. Artists like Monet and Cezanne focused on color, while other artists such as Manet, Renoir, and Degas used the female nude to explore different emotions, such as femininity, sexuality or sensuality.
Hildegarde Handsaeme
Hildegarde Handsaeme’s evocative paintings of nude women convey the innate beauty of the human soul. From her studio located in Terlanen, a small town south-east of Brussels, Belgium, the artist creates paintings that explore human emotion and beauty. With a delicate balance of line and color, her art transcends figurative boundaries to capture the soul of her subjects.
As a painter, Hildegarde Handsaeme has created a unique and recognizable visual language that has been present from the beginning of her career. Her work is instantly identifiable, often making a signature unnecessary — a rare quality that is reserved for the most talented artists. Handsaeme’s compositions, crafted with ink and acrylic, evoke an intimate connection with the viewer through their powerful emotional force.
In an era dominated by male artists, Handsaeme’s works serve as a poignant reminder of the transformative power of love and tenderness. Her evocative paintings of women embody the glamour intuition that is synonymous with womanhood, and her universal language of empathy and compassion resonates across borders and generations.
Born in Kortrijk and now residing in Terlanen, she went the self-teaching way in the plastic art form. Her articulate preference for the figure and its nature led her to the discovery of a artistic plastic language which is utterly inexhaustible.
With a set of straight lines she builds a mysterial haze of inner feelings on the canvas in a simple and penetrative way. She does not call for hallucinating images but lets herself go with a sensitivity guided by her unfailing intuition. Her usage of colours express a honest alliance between the data and her deeper thoughts.
Several publications, such as Women in Art: Masterpieces of Visual Art and Resident Magazine NY have showcased her work, highlighting the enduring appeal of her art. Her work continues to be featured in art exhibitions around the world, and her evocative paintings are sought after by collectors worldwide. Authentic Hildegarde Handsaeme art can be found on 1stDibs, where shoppers can browse a variety of works in various sizes and price ranges. Shoppers can also filter by medium, time period and other attributes to find the perfect piece for their home.
Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli’s 1480 painting of the naked goddess standing on a shell is famous around the world—but few know about his other nude Venus paintings. A new traveling exhibition explores the painter’s body-focused works, including a solitary figure and a version of The Birth of Venus that is a focal point of a life-size painting in the Uffizi’s collection.
This version of Venus—as described by Ovid in the Metamorphoses –is different from the more heavenly, celestial Venus from The Birth of Venus. In this one, the goddess is fully conceived as nature, rather than as a virgin birthing her offspring. The luscious hair the color of ripe papaya and creamy smooth thighs are a far cry from the garden goddess of primitive peoples and the Classical form that is her most familiar form.
The depiction of nude bodies was a controversial subject in Botticelli’s time. The Renaissance era was full of rules that regulated what artists could do. The only exception to the rule was if the female was depicted as Eve in a recreation of the biblical story of the apple. Typically, nude women were confined to statues that were often used as decorative vases.
During the Renaissance, the rediscovery of ancient Greek culture inspired new interest in the human form. Artists began to learn drawing from live models and carried out dissections of corpses to gain a deeper understanding of the body. The Renaissance also saw the spread of humanism, a belief that the mind and spirit are equal.
It was during this era that the depiction of nude figures based on antique models first began to take hold in Italian art. Initially, it was male nude figures that were popular. But, as Botticelli demonstrates in The Birth of Venus, female nude bodies held just as much appeal—if not more.
The painting has been riffed, appropriated and praised by everyone from Andy Warhol to Lady Gaga. It’s been so popular that it became a cultural touchstone that changed the way people see the female body. This painting of the divine beauty reframed how we perceive the female body, and it became one of the pillars of Western art history.
The Birth of Venus
As early as the mid-fourth century BCE, Greek sculptors were starting to show their Gods and noble figures without clothes. But it was not until the 1480s that a painter like Sandro Botticelli made a life-size female nude figure. His Aphrodite, naked for her bath, modestly covering her pubic area with her right hand, is considered one of the first figurative representations of the female body in full-nudeness.
As its name suggests, The Birth of Venus is based on a myth about the goddess of love and beauty. It is a complex painting with numerous interpretations. Some see it as a Christian allegory of the story of Adam and Eve, with the goddess being a symbol of the divine feminine. Others say the cloak she is holding out to herself symbolizes mortal sin. It might seem a bit far-fetched, but it is intriguing to think about how the image of this pagan goddess could be used as an allegory for Christian themes!
Unlike her Gothic and Early Renaissance forebears, who used nudity to symbolize vice and sin, Botticelli’s Venus is depicted as a woman of grace and sensuality. She looks into the viewer’s eyes with a pensive yet confident gaze. The work is imbued with buoyancy and movement, motifs increasingly used by Renaissance artists to express rapture and ecstasy.
Botticelli also uses flowers in the composition to suggest fertility and sexuality. The orange trees and roses in the painting were emblems of the Medici family, to whom the picture was probably commissioned.
While it is hard to know exactly what Botticelli meant by the picture, we do know that it was a revolutionary work. Even now it is difficult to appreciate how innovative–and daring–it was for its time. It is a testament to the fact that nude women are still a powerful and captivating artistic motif. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, artists like Manet and Fragonard began untying the female nude from its mythological context. This trend continued with great success into Romanticism and Realism. Today, the naked female figure is one of the most universal and recognizable symbols in art.