In the High Renaissance period, depicting a female nude was considered very provocative unless she was an ancient goddess. Botticelli broke this convention with this painting of Venus and Cupid.
A girl’s nude photo is tasteful when the art component is stronger than the erotic one. This means decent lighting and a creative pose.
Titian’s Venus and Cupid
Titian is often considered one of the greatest artists to have ever lived, and this painting demonstrates why. He used expressive brushwork and vibrant coloring to create a work that is sensual, dramatic, and deeply alluring. The subject matter is evocative of mythology, love, and lust, and the work continues to resonate with modern audiences.
The painting’s reclining nude subject is not without controversy, but this reflects the complex cultural practices that intertwined marriage, sexuality, and female beauty in Renaissance Italy. The picture has been referred to as “la donna nuda,” or the naked woman, and it depicts Venus with Cupid and two nymphs. Titian painted the piece for Guidobaldo della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, and it has also been called “the Venus of Urbino.” In old inventories, the painting was referred to as Venus asleep and Cupid, which is why it is now titled the Venus of Urbino.
Although the painting has been described as pornographic, scholars have debated its intended meaning. Wilhelm Heinse first characterized it as such in 1785, and Fritz Saxl did so again in 1935. However, other scholars argue that the work is simply a depiction of the goddess sleeping. They argue that the pose of the figure is a subtle allusion to ancient sculptures of the Venus Pudica. The figure’s gesture with her hand covers her genitals, but it also hints at an erotic relationship between the Goddess and Cupid.
While the model’s identity is unknown, she is most likely a prostitute. Prostitutes often combined their profession with art, and Titian was no exception. However, Titian’s use of chiaroscuro (a technique that highlights contrasting light and dark areas) accentuates the sculptural qualities of the woman’s body, and this enhances the painting’s overall appeal.
The reclining female nude motif was popular in Renaissance art, and both Giorgione and Titian developed this theme into works of intensely sensual beauty. The Venus of Urbino is a masterpiece that exemplifies the style that became the hallmark of Titian’s artistic style, and it has continued to influence depictions of women’s bodies in modern paintings.
Cezanne’s Bathers
When little Paul Cezanne was born in 1839, no one could have predicted he would revolutionize painting and influence a whole generation of artists. He is considered the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. He is also a precursor to modern art and has been credited with influencing the way we look at and perceive nude female figures.
Cezanne devoted much of his career to developing his technique and creating works of art that defied traditional categories and shattered a paradigm. This was particularly true of his depictions of nudes. His paintings of bathers have arguably been the most influential depictions of nude women since the Renaissance, and they remain a cornerstone of the representation of the human body.
In the Large Bathers, which was painted in 1906, he shows several female figures standing or lying by a body of water. The work has no erotic implication and the women do not seem to interact with each other. The work evokes an air of tranquility and is dominated by the bright blues of the water and sky. In some areas of the work there is no paint at all. This is most evident in the areas of the bodies of the bathers where it appears that there was a white cloth used to protect the skin from the harshness of the sun.
Although the bathers are not depicted with any particular figure or landscape in mind, they do hark back to classical statuary. The slender, graceful bodies and elongated arms of the bathers suggest a certain classical aesthetic that was popular in Renaissance art. Cezanne was clearly influenced by this style but in this particular work there are no direct references to mythology.
The Large Bathers is an example of the way in which Cezanne attempted to transcend genre and defy conventional ideas of style. He wanted to create a work that would not be pigeonholed into any particular period of history or school of painting.
The composition of the work is based on a triangle, as can be seen in the outlines of the trees in the background and in the positioning of the bathers. The use of color likewise challenges the accepted conventions of Renaissance art. The bathers are not painted in the rich, warm reds of classical portraiture, but in a range of colors that are more reminiscent of natural skin tones. This makes them appear less exotic and closer to reality.
Velasquez’s The Kiss
Few artworks are as adored or widely reproduced as Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-08). Its sumptuous, gilded embrace graces dorm-room posters and $10 T-shirts the world over. But when Klimt created it at the height of Vienna’s psychosexual avant-garde, his work was brazenly erotic and artistically revolutionary.
For the first time in European art, a man and a woman were depicted together in such an intimate way that their bodies seemed to fuse into a single entity. In his paintings, the ecstatic couple was a metaphor for love’s mystical power to overcome monstrous evils and liberate humanity from suffering.
But in The Kiss, the artist’s mastery of form is at its most impressive. Using contrasting patterns in the cloaks of the two lovers, Klimt suggests fairly explicitly that their sexy union is a phallic metaphor for the divine. The ovular shape of the woman’s halo, for instance, resembles a spermatozoon.
In other words, the sexy couple in this painting isn’t just a symbol of heavenly love, but of sexual desire, and its fulfillment in procreation. According to art historian Patrick Bade, “The Kiss is the culmination of a long career in which Klimt sought to express sex and spirituality through the medium of paint.”
In the years leading up to The Kiss, Klimt had become one of the most fearless leaders of the Viennese Avant-garde. He was exploring the cycle of life and its role in sex and procreation in a series of monumental ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna’s great hall. But these sweeping compositions, which were meant to cover a series of themes ranging from philosophy and medicine to jurisprudence, scandalized the established art world by their unabashed sensuality and aesthetic decadence. In the aftermath, Klimt began to use symbols and allegory to conceal his more radical views.
Rubens’ The Nudes
A new study has revealed that Peter Paul Rubens’s paintings of voluptuous female nudes are even more suggestive than previously thought. A team at the University of Antwerp has used ma-XRF (macro X-ray fluorescence) scanning to examine a full-length portrait of Helena Fourment that shows her in nothing but a fur coat, and has discovered that the Flemish painter painted over the top of one of her breasts with varnish to conceal it from view. The painting, known as Het Pelsken, has long been viewed as an intimate study of the second wife of the artist and mother of his children.
But the discovery shows that it was intended to be a more erotic symbol of sexual fulfilment. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports and confirm that Rubens’s brushstrokes, which he made to obscure the right side of the figure’s chest, reveal the shape of her naked nipple. The painting was commissioned by the wealthy widow and philanthropist Jan-Baptist van Brouchoven van Bergeyck, who was also a close friend of the artist. The painting was initially stipulated to be inherited by her sons by Rubens, but she later amended her will to give it to her younger husband Jan-Baptist’s daughters by her first marriage.
While many of Rubens’s female nudes represent elegantly clad, dignified noblewomen, his male figures tend to be more flamboyant and athletic, often depicted in battle or as allegories for high achievement or religious virtue. His depictions of men twisting, bending, and reaching suggest power, virility, and sexual appeal, a stance reinforced by the fact that the artists depicted in this exhibition all wore armour or had sashes covering their bodies.
While the fleshy, voluptuous, and erotic bodies of Rubens’s female and male figures are widely recognised as emblems of Baroque art, research into the ‘Rubensian body’ has been remarkably under-developed. This conference seeks to address the gap in knowledge by bringing together leading scholars for the discussion of recent and novel research into this important aspect of seventeenth-century art.