Nude Art Girls

Nude Art Girls

Exhibitions & Installations

Collection

Antiquities

Drawings

Manuscripts

Paintings

Photographs

Sculpture & Decorative Arts

Research on Museum Collection Provenance

Education

Adult Learners

College Faculty and Students

K-12 Teachers and Students

Kids and Families

Teens

Museum Educators

About the Education Department

Conservation

Antiquities

Decorative Arts and Sculpture

Paintings

Paper

Publications

Public Programs

Talks

Performances

Courses and Culinary

Family

About the Museum

The J. Paul Getty Trust

© J. Paul Getty Trust
|
Privacy Policy
|
Terms of Use
|
Contact Us

Event Calendar
|
Museum Education
|
Library
|
e-Newsletters
|
Press Room

The J. Paul Getty Trust

© J. Paul Getty Trust
|
Privacy Policy
|
Terms of Use
|
Contact Us

The J. Paul Getty Trust

© J. Paul Getty Trust

Allegory of Fortune (detail), about 1530, Dosso Dossi (Giovanni di Niccolò de Lutero), oil on canvas. The J. Paul Getty Museum

The nude—the unclothed or partially clothed human body—has been featured in European art for millennia. After 1400, with the waning of the Middle Ages, artists depicted nudes as increasingly three-dimensional, vibrant, and lifelike— in short, more immediate and real. They employed diverse means: in Italy through a return to the models of ancient Greek and Roman art, and in northern Europe through refinements to the technique of painting in oils that enabled painters to capture textures—of flesh, of hair, of the sparkle in an eye—with unprecedented truth to nature. In concert with new scientific approaches, artists across Europe studied nature—including the human body—with increasing specificity and deliberation.
The meaningful depiction of the human form became the highest aspiration for artists, and their efforts often resulted in figures of notable sensuality. For Christians, however—who represented most of European society at the time—the nude body could be disturbing, arousing personal desire. Their conflicted responses are mirrored in our own body-obsessed era, filled with imagery of nudity.
The Renaissance Nude examines the developments that elevated the nude to a pivotal role in art making between 1400 and 1530. Organized thematically, the exhibition juxtaposes works in different media and from different regions of Europe to demonstrate that depictions of the nude expressed a range of formal ideals while also embodying a wide range of body types, physical conditions, and meanings.
Renaissance Europe comprised a diverse body of countries and territories divided by language, modes of government, and local customs, but with the great majority of its populations sharing a Christian faith. In particular, the doctrines and rites of the Roman Catholic Church fostered common values and traditions throughout western and central Europe. Art played a key role in Catholic worship and instruction: on church walls and facades, on altars, and in liturgical and devotional books. Jesus Christ, the son of God and redeemer of humankind according to Christian belief, resides at the heart of its imagery; his body was shown as mostly unclothed, revealing the signs of his physical persecution and crucifixion. Similarly, imagery of the nude or mostly unclothed bodies of saints and of biblical heroes and heroines functioned in religious observance and private devotion, representing, at times graphically, their torture and martyrdom. Artists’ growing interest in the close study of nature, from plants and animals to human bodies, made the representation of Christian subjects more immediate and accessible, but also more palpable and sensual (and potentially discomfiting). Despite a rise in the depiction of secular subjects encouraged by a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman art, Christian subjects continued to dominate artistic production throughout the Renaissance.
Just as it had in the Middle Ages, the Christian faith dominated art throughout the Renaissance. At the same time, the classical revival— beginning in Italy in the 1300s, in France a bit later, and by the 1500s elsewhere in Europe—fostered the influential intellectual movement known as humanism. Devoted to the recovery of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts, humanism applied classical modes of thinking to education, diplomacy, philosophy, and the writing of history and poetry— among the disciplines we call “the humanities” today. Humanists fostered the taste for the antique in the visual arts, stimulating interest in Greek and Roman mythology as well as literary subjects, inspiring artists to create some of their most original work. This section opens with works from centers of humanism that strongly impacted the emergence of the nude in the 1400s—Florence, Mantua, and Paris— while also exploring how humanism shaped art more fully across the Continent.
The adventures of the Greek and Roman gods—with their stories of adultery and lust, drunkenness, debauchery, and deception— provided artists with opportunities to explore human impulses often condemned by the Christian Church. Within humanistic culture, much art created around the nude was erotic, exploring themes of seduction, the world of dreams, the sexual power of women, and even same-sex desire. Venus, the goddess of love, was a favorite subject of painters and sculptors. Thus, the sensual nude, which encouraged artists to push boundaries, could be controversial. Printmakers, practitioners of a new and essential medium for propagating erotic imagery, endured censorship from the Church, with some works that were considered obscene confiscated and destroyed.
Idealized and beautifully proportioned bodies were not the only types of nudes in Renaissance art. Christian art often represented the bloodied figures of the persecuted Christ and saints, the bodies of the deceased and dying, and the emaciated anatomies of devout ascetics who express their faith through the denial of physical needs. By the fifteenth century, artists sought to underscore the visceral realities of death by crucifixion, scourging, and other tortures. Pious Christians derived meaning and, ultimately, comfort from engagement with the frank terms of Christ’s corporeal sacrifice. Artists also devoted attention to other abject bodies. Both the commitment to close observation and the rediscovery of ancient works such as the violent, emotionally charged Laocoön inspired the representation of complex psychological states. By the 1520s Italian artists such as Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo, reacting to the idealized and heroic art of Raphael and Michelangelo, took inspiration from northern European artists who had long excelled at representing bodies in death, in decay, and outside conventional notions of beauty.
The revival of interest in Greek and Roman art—which was largely focused on the human body—helped transform workshop practice during the Renaissance. An increasingly systematic approach to the empirical study of nature also encouraged drawing from the nude model as a regular part of artistic training—in Tuscany by the 1470s, a few decades later in Germany, and in the Netherlands by the 1500s. Italian artists of the 1400s drew upon both surviving classical works depicting the human body and recently excavated sculptural masterpieces such as the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere . Meanwhile, renewed interest in such ancient texts as Vitruvius’s De architectura (On Architecture), which compared systems of architectural proportion with human ones, encouraged artists to explore the ideal proportions of the body.

Exemplifying the close link between art and science and the commitment to realistic observation, Italian artists such as Pollaiuolo and Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy through dissection, seeking to understand the human skeleton along with the placement and character of muscle. Artists’ intense and repeated study from the nude model was intended to develop mastery of bodily structure, gesture, and pose, thereby facilitating the creation of convincing figural compositions. In northern Europe, such innovations were introduced to artistic training by leading masters, among them Albrecht Dürer and Hans Baldung.

The broad appeal of the nude extended to the novel and personal ways Renaissance patrons sought to incorporate nude figures into the works of art they commissioned. For the interiors of their palaces, Italian humanist patrons sought elaborate decorative cycles, often on such mythological themes as “The Loves of the Gods,” in which the depicted hero’s erotic conquests stood for the patron’s notion of personal virility and his romantic aspirations. Commemorative bronze medals, featuring portraits on one side and allegorical nude figures on the other, offered another way for an artist to evoke the character and ideals of illustrious patrons. Further, just as humanist authors like Petrarch wrote in praise of their beloveds, aristocratic patrons sought flattering portrayals of their mistresses and other beauties, often seminude and in historical guises, creating a new genre, belle donne (“beautiful women”). An intriguing and unusual antecedent of this genre is Fouquet’s erotic portrayal of the French King Charles VII’s mistress with bared breast as the Virgin Mary.

About

Discover

Learn

Tag art

Support us

® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).
Art UK has updated its cookies policy. By using this website you are agreeing to the use of cookies. To find out more read our updated Use of Cookies policy and our updated Privacy policy .
Remember me (uncheck on a public computer)
By signing up you agree to terms and conditions
and privacy policy

Enter your email address below and we’ll send you a link to reset your password
I agree to the Art UK terms and conditions
and privacy policy

Sign up to the Art UK newsletter , a weekly edit of insightful art stories

Posted 12 Aug 2021, by
Andrew Shore
Trawling through Art UK, I came across this 1927 work by the artist George Spencer Watson .
It was the first painting in the collection of The Harris in Preston to feature a naked woman. As such, it was controversial, and some Councillors thought it would corrupt the morals of Prestonians.
History has not recorded any specific debauchery or low moral behaviour in Preston as a result of this artwork's display.
Watson's works in UK collections are a strange mix of sombre portraits and sensuous nudes, and sure enough, another of his nudes is now in Bournemouth, in the collection of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.
Photo credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum
There is no specific reaction recorded to this particular painting, but it set me wondering if this had been a common occurrence in galleries throughout the land.
Surely the Preston nude can't be the only one that caused some controversy at the time... Well indeed not. Artistic nudes have had a complicated history, tied up with the male gaze, the public perception of what was 'decent' at different times in history, religion, and plenty of other factors.
There are famous examples that caused a stir in public such as Manet's Olympia and the 1917 exhibition of Modigliani's works that was closed, supposedly due to the depiction of pubic hair. There are private works not originally intended to be shown to the public, such as Goya's La Maya desnuda (The Naked Maja) and Courbet's L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) – both are now in major museums (the Prado and Musee D'Orsay respectively). But here's a quick look at some of the other works in the UK that have a salacious or saucy history.
The next nude on our list is by the firmly establishment figure of Sir Gerald Festus Kelly . Kelly was one of the foremost portrait artists of his time, and yet even his standing could not prevent a public backlash when this painting went on display in Newport Museum and Art Gallery in 1947.
© the copyright holder. Photo credit: Newport Museum and Art Gallery
To be fair to the denizens of 1940s Newport, the fuss seems to have been caused mainly by one man, Dorian Herbert, who was the bishop of Caerleon for a small independent group called the Ancient British Church. His sister had seen some girls sniggering at the work, so he (naturally) went to see the picture for himself. Clearly it left quite an impression as he subsequently described it as 'brazen, abandoned and vulgar'. This didn't stop 20,000 people queuing up to see it (perhaps it even helped), or Kelly later becoming the President of the Royal Academy.
When it was put on display in the gallery again in 2008 the biggest complaint this time was that the model was smoking. How times change...
Going back a little further, in 1914 a version of Auguste Rodin 's The Kiss was lent to Lewes Town Council for display in the Town Hall.
Originally conceived as just one part of the sculptor's large Gates of Hell , the embracing lovers are supposed to be Paolo and Francesca , who were real people but immortalised as a lustful couple in Dante's Divine Comedy .
Although the French public had embraced the work, the East Sussex town was perhaps not ready for the amorous subject matter. Soldiers were soon billeted in the Town Hall due to the start of the First World War, which led to this most famous of sculptures being draped in a tarpaulin. It was eventually acquired by the Tate in the 1950s and remains a firm favourite today.
You can find out more about its surprising history in this Tate Shots video.
Some of the issues around depicting female nudes are that nudity was traditionally fine for representing goddesses, personifications or other mythological beings, but not for actual real women.
This can be shown in the works of Philip Wilson Steer – for example, his Seated Nude: The Black Hat , painted around 1900.
Steer was another establishment figure. He taught at the Slade from 1893 to 1930 and in 1931 was awarded the Order of Merit. The objections to this work were that the hat is modern, and therefore the viewer sees the model as a contemporary, real woman – not Eve, not Venus, not 'Spring'.
This oil sketch was not exhibited until it was chosen for the Tate Gallery by the Director John Rothenstein directly from Steer's studio in 1941. Steer said: 'friends told me it was spoiled by the hat; they thought it indecent that a nude should be wearing a hat, so it's never been shown.'
A similar composition of his is the coyly titled The Panama Hat , where the focus is once again not really on the hat.
Photo credit: University of Aberdeen
Is it time for a nice cup of tea? Perhaps surprisingly for a portrait in a Scottish castle, this painting shows a lady drinking tea in the nude.
Photo credit: Kinloch Castle, Rum (NatureScot)
So far, so chilly. But why would this be considered scandalous? The reason is that it's thought that the model was the lady of the estate.
Close examination of the background, the red carpet and the lion skin, strongly indicates the Great Hall at Kinloch Castle as the location. From what we can see of the model's facial features, they are remarkably similar to photographs of Lady Bullough . The cup and saucer resemble pieces from a tea service in Lady Bullough's drawing room.
Posed away from the viewer, it's possible that this piece was always intended as a private piece for Sir George Bullough's eyes only (or indeed for one or more of her rumoured lovers ). That's clearly no longer the case, but it's a beautiful painting – the only known work by Louis Galliac in a UK public collection.
Drinking tea in the buff is apparently not uncommon, as shown by this lithograph by Leslie Cole of his wife Brenda.
© the artist's estate. Photo credit: Swindon Museum and Art Gallery
Back on the theme of artists painting the aristocratic ladies of the manor, it's worth looking at the case of Rex Whistler .
In 1936 Whistler was commissioned by Charles Paget (1885–1947), 6th Marquess of Anglesey to paint a trompe l'oeil for his country seat of Plas Newydd House in Wales. The finished work is an ambitious and fantastical mural , over 17.5 metres long – purportedly the largest work on canvas in the UK. Whistler undertook the commission on site, basically living with the Paget family for a couple of years while he progressed the work. During his stay he became infatuated with one of the Marquess' daughters, Lady Caroline Paget.
He painted her a number of times, including this nude.
Photo credit: National Trust Images
It's not known if Lady Caroline posed for the work or if it's from Whistler's imagination. We do know that although the pair were friends, ultimately his love was unrequited, and he was to die in the Second World War, killed in action in Normandy. It seems unlikely the nude study was ever shown to the Marquess, and yet today it is on display in the National Trust property.
Artists sometimes use family members as their models, and here Ivor Williams unusually depicts a tender moment with perhaps unexpected nudity – his proposal to his wife.
© the artist's estate. Photo credit: Merthyr Tydfil Leisure Trust
This reclining nude was also modelled by the artist's wife.
© the artist's estate. Photo credit: Merthyr Tydfil Leisure Trust
But why the extra title? When the artist's daughter was a young girl the painting went on display, and a friend exclaimed 'Oh look it's Brown Owl!' Mrs Williams was Brown Owl of the local Brownies, and the young girl recognised her. There's probably not a badge for that.
So far, perhaps unsurprisingly, we've seen quite a few nude women, and it does seem to have been women's nudity in public galleries that people have found so objectionable. However, there are a couple of male nudes that also caused something of a stir.
In t
Sperm Mar Test
Hot Asian Model
Home Cuckold Sex

Nude Art Girls

Report Page