The Birth of Venus
by Sandro Botticelli: 1485
This painting was one of a series which Botticelli produced, taking as inspiration written descriptions by Pliny the Elder, Leonidas of Tarentum, Antipater of Sidon, Archias and the 2nd century historian Lucian of masterpieces of Ancient Greece which had long since disappeared. The ancient painting by Apelles was called Venus Anadyomene, "Anadyomene" meaning "rising from the sea"; this title was also used for Botticelli's painting, 'The Birth of Venus' only becoming its better-known title in the 19th century. The central figure of Venus in the painting is very similar to Praxiteles' sculpture of Aphrodite. The version of her birth, is where she arises from the sea foam, already a full woman.
In classical antiquity, the sea shell was a metaphor for a woman's vulva.
The pose of Botticelli's Venus is reminiscent of the Venus de' Medici, a marble sculpture from classical antiquity in the Medici collection which Botticelli had opportunity to study.
Quoted from: "The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)." Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
The Birth of Venus (Detail)
by Sandro Botticelli 1485
Venus de Medici
The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a life-size Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a first century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the Aphrodite of Cnidos, which would have been made by a sculptor in the immediate Praxitelean tradition, perhaps at the end of the century. It has become one of the navigation points by which the progress of the Western classical tradition is traced, the references to it an outline of the changes of taste and the process of classical scholarship. It is housed in the Uffizi, Florence, Italy.
The goddess is depicted in a fugitive, momentary pose, as if surprised in the act of emerging from the sea, to which the dolphin at her feet alludes. The dolphin would not have been a necessary support for the bronze original.
Quoted from: "Venus de' Medici" Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Capitoline Venus
The Capitoline Venus is a type of statue of Venus, specifically one of several Venus Pudica (modest Venus) types (others include the Venus de' Medici type), of which several examples exist. The type ultimately derives from the Aphrodite of Cnidus. The Capitoline Venus and her variants are recognizable from the position of the arms-standing after a bath, Venus begins to cover her breasts with her right hand, and her groin with her left hand.
This original of this type (from which the following copies derive) is thought to be a lost third or second century BCE variation on Praxiteles' work from Asia Minor, which modifies the Praxitelean tradition by a carnal and voluptuous treatment of the subject and the goddess's modest gesture with both hands-rather than only one over the groin, in Praxiteles's original.
Quoted from: "Capitoline Venus" Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Another Painting from the 19th Century inspired by Botticelli's Painting
The Birth of Venus: 1879
by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
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Venus, known as the bringer of joy, Roman goddess of love and beauty stands on a shell in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by admirers. Two mermen use conch shells to trumpet her arrival as the angels that came to witness her birth ascend to heaven. This painting is truly a tour de force for Bouguereau, standing just over 9’ 10” high, and just under 7’2” wide. Birth of Venus contains 22 fully worked out figures all of which come together to form an amazing composition. Bouguereau uses the goddess, Venus, as an exemplar of the Beauty in our lives. Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus holds a strong resemblance to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, which also depicts Venus with long flowing hair standing on a similar shell.
by Kara Ross
Quoted from: "Art Renewal Center Museum" Artist Information for William Adolphe Bouguereau
THE FEMALE NUDE
The Nude - especially the sensual, voluptuous and provocative Female Nude - is probably the most popular subject in the history of painting, inspiring artists for centuries. Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, created the first monumental female nude in his Birth of Venus, in 1484, certainly one of the two or three most iconic images in Western Art. That was followed by Giorgione da Castelfranco's (1477-1510) 'Sleeping Venus' in 1508 (24 years later!), which was the first lying female nude. Those two paintings opened the floodgates for almost 500 years of countless standing and lying female nudes to be created, many of them sublimely beautiful or delightfully erotic. Almost every artist since then, at one point or another in his life and sometimes even quite often, has focused his genius on attempts at representing and expressing his reaction to the female form.
Sleeping Venus: ca 1510
by Giorgione
'The Sleeping Venus', also known as the 'Dresden Venus', is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione, with, it is now generally accepted, the landscape and sky, by Titian, completed after Giorgione's death in 1510, as Vasari first noted. It is in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.
The painting, one of the last works by Giorgione, portrays a nude woman whose profile seems to follow that of the hills in the background. Giorgione put a great deal of effort into painting the background details and shadows. The choice of a nude woman marked a revolution in art, and is considered by some authorities one of the starting points of modern art. The painting was unfinished at the time of his death. The landscape and sky were later finished by Titian, who later painted the similar Venus of Urbino.
Quoted from: "Sleeping Venus (Giorgione)" Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Venus of Urbino: 1538
by Tiziano Vecelli (Titian)
_1538.jpg)
The Venus of Urbino (1538) is an oil painting by the Italian master Titian. It depicts a nude young woman, identified with the goddess Venus, reclining on a couch or bed in the sumptuous surroundings of a Renaissance palace. It hangs in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. The figure's pose is based on Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (ca. 1510); however, Titian uses more sensuality in comparison to Giorgione's remoteness. Devoid as it is of any classical or allegorical trappings ('Venus' displays none of the attributes of the goddess she is supposed to represent), the painting is unapologetically erotic.
The frankness of Venus' expression is often noted; she stares straight at the viewer, unconcerned with her nudity. In her right hand she holds a posy of flowers while her left covers her vulva, provocatively placed in the center of the composition. In the near background a dog, symbolizing fidelity, is asleep. The image of a dog usually symbolizes faithfulness, and the fact that it is asleep hints that the woman portrayed is unfaithful.
Quoted from: "Venus of Urbino" Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
The appeal of the painted nude has often had less to do with the search for a cultural experience than the desire for erotic sensation. It has even made some people behave in a somewhat bizarre manner. Cardinal Richelieu, for example, that famously over-zealous tyrant, once went to the most extraordinary lengths to acquire "Rubens' Bath of Diana". Some people even became passionate art collectors, sensitive connoisseurs on the surface, while in truth just (quite reasonably, in my opinion) thrilled by the idea of acquiring a particularly appealing nude.
Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by the Fauns: 1638-40
"Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by the Fauns" was painted by Peter Paul Rubens in Oil on canvas during the Baroque epoch in 1636-1640. The style of the painting is Flemish Baroque and the theme represented is Mythological Motif, Nudes. The painting is currently displayed at Prado, Madrid.
Rubens was a Flemish painter and diplomat.
After apprenticeships in Antwerp, he was admitted to its painters' guild in 1598. He went to Italy in 1600 and until 1608 worked for the duke of Mantua, who in 1603 sent him to Spain to present paintings and other gifts to Philip III, the first of many diplomatic missions he would perform for various courts over three decades.
In the days of antiquity, the founding days of our Culture, it was the Male Nude that predominated; in fact almost to the point where the female nude was hardly ever created at all. Sculpting was primarily the Art of those earliest days, and we find very few female nudes, although male ones are everywhere. The male was regarded as the symbol of perfection, both physically and morally. He was considered the expression of virility, and invariably shown in heroic stances. The rare female, on the other hand, was of course called 'Venus' and only ever shown with her hands coyly covering her sex. The Greeks were amazingly untouched by all the exquisite beauties and possibilities of expression contained in the female nude. For them, the epitome of perfection lay both visually and intellectually in the male, and his nudity was a common part of both art and life. Sports were an extremely important part of early Greek life, and the majority of the almost exclusively male participants appeared naked.
Laocoon and his Sons
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polyclitus. It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents.
Quoted from: "Laocoon and his Sons" Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Discus Thrower
Prima Porta Augustus
(The Ideal Roman and Symbol of Perfection)
With the advent of Judaism and Christianity, the poor female was doomed to virtual anonymity for another fifteen hundred years, the dam only being burst asunder by the Italian Renaissance and Botticelli's Birth of Venus at the end of the fifteenth century. Before then, the medieval world had attempted to conquer the senses; through humanist ideals, the Italian Renaissance honored them. Since then, the nude, particularly the female nude, has happily never looked back.
In the Middle Ages, the nude represented evil or death; in the Renaissance the nude combined idealism with sensuality. Later, so-called religious nudes even tried - ostensibly - to convey a sense of Spirituality, while Baroque and Rococo artists simply gloried in their erotic quality. Although photography has caused the modern eye to see the nude as little more than a pin-up, I still see it as the most marvelous vehicle of expression out of all the other possibilities in any of the other genres. After having achieved mastery in all the other genres, it was finally to the nude that I turned, with the intention of making it the central subject of my work as far into the future as I am able to see.
Adam and Eve: 1504
by Albrect Durer
Under the influence of Italian theory, Dürer became increasingly drawn to the idea that the perfect human form corresponded to a system of proportion and measurements. Near the end of his life, he wrote several books codifying his theories: the Underweysung der Messung (Manual of measurement), published in 1525, and Vier Bücher von menschlichen Proportion (Four books of human proportion), published in 1528, just after his death. Dürer's fascination with ideal form is manifest in Adam and Eve. The first man and woman are shown in nearly symmetrical idealized poses: each with the weight on one leg, the other leg bent, and each with one arm angled slightly upward from the elbow and somewhat away from the body. The figure of Adam is reminiscent of the Hellenistic Apollo Belvedere, excavated in Italy late in the fifteenth century. The first engravings of the sculpture were not made until well after 1504, but Dürer must have seen a drawing of it. Dürer was a complete master of engraving by 1504: human and snake skin, animal fur, and tree bark and leaves are rendered distinctively. The branch Adam holds is of the mountain ash, the Tree of Life, while the fig, of which Eve has broken off a branch, is the forbidden 'Tree of Knowledge'. Four of the animals represent the medieval idea of the four temperaments: the cat is choleric, the rabbit sanguine, the ox phlegmatic, and the elk melancholic. Before the Fall, these humors were held in check, controlled by the innocence of man; once Adam and Eve ate from the apple of knowledge, all four were activated, all innocence lost.
Adam and Eve
by Van Der Goes
This is the left panel of a diptych. The right panel shows the Lamentation. Perhaps Van der Goes intended to show two important moments in Christianity side by side. On the left the Fall of Man, when mankind apparently was doomed to suffer and dwell on earth forever. On the right the Death on the Cross, the moment salvation came within reach.
In the foreground the snake succeeds in letting Eve eat from the forbidden fruit.
Following the style of Van Eyck, Van der Goes paid much attention to detail. Every leaf on the trees in the park like landscape appears to be painted individually.
The Renaissance
After the Dark Ages came the Middle Ages, the period we call medieval. It wasn't until the mid-thirteenth century, when Giotto (1267 - 1337) burst into the world. More or less single handedly he ignited the flame of Western Art, by showing the human figure in solid plastic form for the first time, as an image to be shared with the viewer. Those first images were of course paid for by the church and so the subject matter was dictated by them as propaganda, as indeed it was, in essence, for the next five hundred years. Images were used by the church to manipulate their flock, few of whom could read or write, and those who could were strictly controlled as to what they were allowed to read or to write. For me, it has always been the artists who managed to rise above this restriction who show most clearly the greatness of their genius. In spite of the control, and even the sad purpose that Art was put to, once it was activated by Giotto, the light in the Souls of the great Masters burnt so brightly that the Renaissance was born.
The Renaissance in the North, mostly in Belgium then known as Flanders, was very different from its counterpart taking place simultaneously in the South, in Italy and later in Spain. However silly it might sound, I have always put this down at least in part to the weather, due to the very different climates that prevailed in these two different areas of Europe. In the North, where it was almost always cold, the Art clings to medieval principles and doctrines to a much larger degree than in Italy. Northerners would have simply wished to keep their clothes on to keep warm! And so not only were they forbidden to look at any naked bodies because of the surrounding sinfulness implied by such an act, they were somewhat encouraged to adhere to those distorted principles by the fact that they never really wanted to take their clothes of in the first place! Acts of passion - of which there must at least have been some! - which would have caused exceptions to this rule and led to the throwing of clothes to the winds (literally) would have been very secret, on pain of death and anyway were never reflected in the art of the times.
In Italy, the contrary was the case, in spite of Italy being the very heart of the doctrines that were causing all these inhibitions. The wonderful weather, the hot sunshine, was more powerful than the dogma to the point where the temptation to throw off ones clothes was stronger than the fear of reprisals for doing so, and that was reflected in art! In 1480 Botticelli gave us his wonderful Primavera, in which his adorable and sensual nymphs are clothed in diaphanous gossamer robes, and two years later finally came his Venus, in which even those fripperies are dispensed with, and the glorious path of the Female Nude was launched.
Primavera by Boticelli
Primavera (1478) by Sandro Botticelli. It is Spring, Nature's favorite season. The three Charites (Graces) are dancing, a Nymph (Chloris) spreads flowers. It's time for a new erotic adventure represented by Aphrodite (Venus) and her flying son Eros (who uses blind his bow). The wind Zephyrus captures Chloris. Only Hermes (as the Psychopompos who carries the soul of the persons who died to the underworld ) on the left side seems to ignore everything. He knows that death does not care what season it is.
In this world of feminine fascination Botticelli loved everything. He knows the attraction of the toilet and of jewels, but he knows above all that no gem and no invention of man can rival the beauty of the female form. He was the first to understand the exquisite charm of silhouettes, the first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and, above all, the exquisite carving of the hand. But, even more, he understood "le prestige insolent des grands yeux,"-large eyes, full, restless, and sad, because they are filled with love.
Look at these young maidens of Botticelli's. What a heavenly vision! Did Alfred de Musset know these veiled forms that seem to float over the meadow and did he think of them in the sleeplessness of his nights of May? Did he think of that young girl whose arm rises supple as the stem of a flower, of that young Grace so charming in the frame of her fair hair confined by strings of pearls, or, indeed, of that Primavera, who advances so imperiously beautiful, in her long robe of brocade, scattering handfuls of flowers that she makes blossom, or of that young mother more charming still in her modest grace, with her beautiful eyes full of infinite tenderness.
And around this scene, what a beautiful frame of verdure and flowers! Nature has donned her richest festal robes; the inanimate things, like the human beings, all speak of love and happiness, and tell us that the master of this world is that little child with bandaged eyes, who amuses himself by shooting his arrows of fire.
From: Botticelli Primavera / Triumph of Spring
After Giotto, when the slow birth of the Renaissance both Northern and Southern was taking place, the first great nudes ever to appear were van Eyck's (1390 - 1441) Adam and Eve, side panels in the extraordinarily brilliant work, The Adoration of the Lamb, known as the Ghent Altarpiece. That was painted around 1432, and made van Eyck, as well as being the innovator who evolved the technique of oil painting, also the first to paint a serious, monumental nude. It was nearly 40 years before the next one, another Adam and Eve, this time by van Eyck's Northern compatriot Van Der Goes, (1440 - 1482) painted in 1475, (actually the year of Michelangelo's birth.) In this version, the lovely Eve is portrayed in a sinuous pose that accentuates her little round breasts and swollen belly, the essential ingredients of the ideal Northern nude. Personally I always believed that the swollen belly gave a vague hint to the viewer of pregnancy, planting the concept of pregnancy and thus penetration in his mind and so subtly added a transparent glaze of eroticism over the painting, albeit a psychological one.
The Adoration of the Lamb by van Eyck
The most famous work of Jan van Eyck is a huge Ghent Altarpiece with many scenes in the city of Ghent. It is said to have been begun by Jan's elder brother Hubert, of whom little is known, and was completed by Jan in 1432. On the frame a quatrain is inscribed which states that the polyptych was begun by Pictor Hubertus Eyck, and finished by his brother Jan, at the request of Jodocus Vijd, deputy burgomaster of Ghent, warden of the church of Saint John, and of his wife, Elisabeth Borluut, who commissioned it.
The stylistic analysis reveals that in the painting the work of two different hands can be clearly discerned. The overall conception of the altarpiece is the work of Hubert, along with the execution of certain parts, such as the panels in the lower tier. Here, the manner is archaic, and reflects the continuing dominance of the international style that was practiced by Broederlam. The composition is typically unoriginal: the landscape is still conceived as a distant background, with which the figures at the front have no organic relation, an effect that is reinforced by the bird's eye point of view.
This polyptych is mystical, not to say esoteric, in intention, and is imbued throughout with both spiritual and intellectual signification. When opened, it represents the communion of saints, which is "the new heaven and the new earth", in the words of the Revelation of Saint John. Thus the central panel of the lower tier portrays the saints symbolizing the eight Beatitudes gathered round the altar where the sacrifice of the Lamb is taking place, at the centre of the heavenly garden which has sprung from His blood.
To left and right, in the foreground, are two processions facing one another. One of these is made up of the Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets, and the other of figures from the New Testament. Some of them are kneeling, barefoot. Behind them is assembled the hierarchy of the Church - popes, deacons and bishops, wearing sumptuous jewelry and clothes in the bright red of martyrdom. In the background are two further groups, facing each other as if they had just emerged from the surrounding shrubbery. These are, on one side, the Confessors of the Faith, tightly packed together and almost all dressed in blue; and on the other side, the Virgin Martyrs, holding out palm fronds and wearing in their hair crowns of flowers of a kind traditionally worn by young girls at certain holy ceremonies. In the middle of the panel, around the altar where the Lamb spills forth his blood, angels kneel, holding the emblems of His Passion. Grace is symbolized by a radiant dove hovering in the sky, and eternal life is represented by a fountain in the foreground. A paradisiacal landscape runs across all five lower panels, uniting them in a single composition. It is strewn with plants from different countries and flowers of different seasons. The central panel is vibrant with green, while those to the sides are more arid and rocky. The horizon sits high in the frame and is closed off by groves of trees, behind which clusters of fairy-tale buildings can be made out, representing the heavenly Jerusalem.
The community of saints also extends onto the side panels. Magnificently arrayed horsemen, representing the 'Soldiers of Christ', are followed by the Just Judges. Opposite them are the 'Holy Hermits' who have renounced the world, and the 'Pilgrim Saints', who were favorite figures of identification throughout the Middle Ages. They are led by a giant of a man, Saint Christopher. Many later commentators have suggested that his great height would have reminded the contemporary viewer of Jodocus Vijd's brother, also called Christopher. In the middle of the upper tier is God Almighty, the 'Word', essence and origin of the universe. He is dressed in red and is crowned with a magnificent tiara. On his left is Mary and on his right, Saint John the Baptist. These central figures are surrounded by angels who are singing or playing instruments. At the far right and left of the composition respectively are the figures of Adam and Eve. They were painted by Jan Van Eyck, and are set into trompe-l'oeil niches. Light and shadow play delicately over their forms which stand out as though they had been sculpted in the round.
In order to pacify the church and pass religious censorship, Northern artists especially would make their works appear moralistic. Anything, so long as they could paint the nude, as essential an impulse for artists as it was for an athlete to run a four minute mile, or a mountain climber to reach the summit of Everest. But while a good example of this is Hans Baldung's (1485-1545) Death and the Maiden, still there would always be the artists who could paint delightfully sensual nudes whilst giving them just enough chastity to pass the ecclesiastic censor by calling them Adam and Eve.
Death and the Maiden by Hans Baldung
Death and the Maiden is a common motif in Renaissance art, especially in painting. It was developed from the Dance of Death. The new element was an erotic subtext. A prominent representative is Hans Baldung Grien. Hans Baldung, known as Hans Baldung Grien/Grün (ca. 1480-1545) was a German Renaissance artist in painting and printmaking in woodcut. He was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer.
Three Ages of the Woman and the Death by Hans Baldung
This theme has a multi-faceted past . It is rooted in very old mythological traditions: among the ancient Greeks, the Abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades (Pluto), god of Hell, is a clear prefiguration of the clash between Eros and Thanatos. The young goddess gathered flowers in company of carefree nymphs when she saw a pretty narcissus and plucked it. At that moment, the ground opened; Hades came out of the underworld and abducted Persephone.
This old vision will take a new form at the end of the 15th century and become the theme of Death and the Maiden, which will culminate in Germany at the Renaissance. In many 'Dances of Death' already figured a representation of Death with a fine lady or with a beautiful virgin. The image of a young woman was also found in The Three Ages and Death. However in both cases, there was no trace of eroticism. But with Death and the maiden theme, something new happened. People discovered a dark bound between sexuality and death. In this type of iconography, the young lady was not involved in a dance anymore, but in a sensual intercourse, which will become always more erotic as time went by. Unlike the dance of death, the 'Death and the Maiden' pictures don't have any verses to explain them. Due to that, this new kind of illustration lost somewhat of its dramatic intensity; its didactic role became less important. On the other hand, this form of art gained a kind of intimacy. However in spite of the sensuality of this genre, it still had a moralistic goal; it kept on pointing out the fact that life is short as is the proud beauty of a woman. Her body, her face, her hair and her chest will someday feed the worms. The theme of 'Death and the Maiden' has sometimes been used as a pretext to represent female nudity.
Three Ages of Man and Three Graces
Hans Baldung-Grien received his artistic education primarily from Albrecht Dürer. He was also influenced by the Danube School, the inspiration of which can be seen in the landscape with the lichen-covered tree. Baldung-Grien here presents a symbolic interpretation of the ages of man in the constant presence of death. The old woman in the painting faces death resolutely but tries in vain to ward him off. The young woman, whose smooth white body contrasts strongly with the half-decayed figure of death, takes no notice of him. Instead, she regards herself in a mirror, a symbol of the vanity and transience of earthly existence. The infant boy on the ground with his hobby-horse embodies the first, immature stage of life. He sees the whole world as yet indistinctly, through a veil.
However, it was the great Italian Renaissance that finally began to shatter the bonds that caused the Medieval association of the naked with the dead. In spite of the church, and even a few fig-leaves added at a later date when the Master was well out of the way, it was Michelangelo's (1475-1564) nudes that blasted the monumental nude out into the world and the word Beauty was once again associated with the Nude. Could the Male Nude ever be painted more - or even as - greatly as those wonderful "ignudi" in the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508-1512). But while Michelangelo's works were mainly of the monumental male nude, artists such as Giorgione, Titian and Correggio were quick to follow on his heels and balance the scales in favor of Venus over Mars.
The Ceiling Detail - Sistine Chapel
(Michelangelo Buonarroti)
The picture shows a transversal section of the ceiling with a smaller field of the apex of the ceiling. It demonstrates the following design elements:
Thrones for the Prophets and Sibyls
One of the seven Prophets (Ezekiel), one of the five Sibyls (Cumaean)
Two of the twenty-four square pedestals forming niches for the Prophets and Sibyls and surmounted by twin 'putti' (a boy and a girl) in relief
Two small angels as a background to the enthroned figures
Two of the ten white angular cornices joining the capitals of the putti-pilasters
Four of the twenty 'ignudi' occupying the cornices, holding cornucopias, ribbons and garlands of fruit
Two of the ten gold medallions in reliefs depicting scenes from the Book of Kings and supported by two ignudi
One of the five smaller fields of the apex of the ceiling guarded by four ignudi and covered by a scene from the Genesis (The Creation of Eve).
The Ceiling Detail - Sistine Chapel
(Michelangelo Buonarroti)
The picture shows a transversal section of the ceiling with a larger field of the apex of the ceiling. It demonstrates the following additional design elements:
Two of the eight spheric triangles above the lunettes, with frescoes depicting the ancestors of Christ
Four of the twenty-four bronze nudes flanking ram heads at the triangles and spandrels
One of the four larger fields of the apex containing a scene from the Genesis (The Creation of Adam)
David: 1504
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499-1501. Things were changing in the city after the fall of Savonarola and the rise of the gonfaloniere Pier Soderini. He was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, to be placed in the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, David in 1504. This masterwork, created out of marble from the quarries at Carrara, definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination.
It was actually 52 years after van Eyck's magnificent Adam and Eve that Botticelli finally painted his even more famous Birth of Venus (1484). This painting became one of the two or three most famous icons in Art, and part of the reason for that was that it was the first time in history that an almost life sized standing nude had been seen in paint and with no pretended connection to religion, just the much more loose and mild one to mythology. Interestingly enough, it was still 24 years later before another nude, now lost, was seen of similar proportions, in Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) Leda and the Swan, and a further 30 years before the floodgates were finally blown open with Giorgione's (1477-1510) Sleeping Venus, painted in 1508. From then on there was no stopping the female nude's magnificent and steady progress throughout history with the creation of many of the world's greatest (nude) masterpieces - one painted almost annually!
Leda: 1508-15
by Leonardo da Vinci
Leda: 1510-15
by Leonardo da Vinci
Leda: 1530
by Leonardo da Vinci
Leda and the Swan is a motif from Greek mythology, in which Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. As the story goes, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped or seduced Leda on the same night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.
The motif was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although Timotheos is known to have represented Leda in sculpture; small-scale examples survive showing both reclining and standing poses in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.
Enough of the morbid associations with the nude of medieval times clung to Northern art however, for Holbein (1497-1543) to paint his Dead Christ, in 1521, in the early years of the Northern Renaissance. This was the year after Titian (1487-1576) in the South, had painted his famous Bacchanal, and just look at the difference. It is hard to believe that the two works were painted in the same century. The Northern nude clung to medieval concepts of sin and decay while the Italians loudly smashed the chains, and were constantly at loggerheads with the church for doing so.
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb: 1521
by Hans Holbein the Younger
Portraits apart, this is perhaps Holbein's most striking image. Since Dostoevsky's observations in the nineteenth century, which dwelt on the forbidding aspects of physical decay and bodily corruption, the painting has been seen as the product of a mind steeped in the apocalyptic horrors that were unleashed by the first phase of the Reformation. But what is known of Holbein's phlegmatic interpretation of the human condition belies this interpretation. Modern authorities suggest that Holbein intended to stress the sheer miracle of Resurrection and its imminence, since the minutely-observed level of decay in the gangrenous wounds suggests that we see Christ's body three days after death.
An inscription in brush on paper, 'IESUS NAZARENUS REX IUDAEORUM', borne above the painting by angels holding the instruments of the Passion, precludes its use as a predella panel (at the base of an altarpiece), as does our viewpoint of the body. Instead, a role as an object of contemplation, a reminder of Christ's sufferings and mortification and his subsequent triumph, is suggested. Such practices flourished from the late middle ages and account in part for the many representations of the dead Christ from Lombardy (the Bellinis in Venice also produced several). Mantegna's famous version grapples with artistic as well as religious problems in its dramatic foreshortening, which are not fully resolved. By contrast, Holbein's draftsmanship appears masterly.
An unverified tradition asserts that a drowned body fished out of the Rhine served the painter as a model for the figure of Christ lying in the tomb. Even if it is not true, the legend is a telling testament to the terrifying realism of Holbein's depiction of a corpse in a state of rigor mortis.
Bacchanal: 1523-24
by Titian
The Bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman and Greek god Bacchus. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy by way of Etruria (c. 200 BC), the Bacchanalia were originally held in secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred on three days of the year in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. According to Livy, the extension happened in an era when the leader of the Bacchus cult was Paculla Annia - though it is now believed that some men had participated before that.
Livy informs us that the rapid spread of the cult, which he claims indulged in all kinds of crimes and political conspiracies at its nocturnal meetings, led in 186 BC to a decree of the Senate-the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Apulia in Southern Italy (1640), now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna-by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree (Livy claims there were more executions than imprisonment), the Bacchanalia survived in Southern Italy long past the repression.
Modern scholars hold Livy's account in doubt and believe that the Senate acted against the Bacchantes for one or more of three reasons. First, because women occupied leadership positions in the cult (contrary to traditional Roman family values). Second, because slaves and the poor were the cult's members and were planning to overthrow the Roman government. Or third, according to a theory proposed by Erich Gruen, as a display of the Senate's supreme power to the Italian allies as well as competitors within the Roman political system, such as individual victorious generals whose popularity made them a threat to the senate's collective authority.
The primitives, as the pre-Renaissance artists are known, were not even allowed to see the nude, especially the Female Nude, and husband and wife would sleep together for years, even managing to perpetrate the human race without as much as a glance at each other's bodies. And so the reason for a certain stiffness in the early nudes, as in the works of Lucas Cranach for example, has to be viewed with that in mind. They would have been created at least mostly from the artist's imagination, hard to believe but it was indeed the case. The church would not condone a man's even looking at his wife naked, without condemning it as licentious and anti-godly - in spite of having created the myth that we were created for the pleasure of that very god, which surely would have included looking at us and letting us enjoy the same privilege. But in the case of Cranach, particularly if one understands that history surrounding him, then one is more free to enjoy his exquisite and loving manner of rendering the female nude, as something obviously beautiful and most desirable to him at least. His coloring, soft pinks and creams, gives a glow to the skin that brings them alive in spite of their often quite doll-like forms.
A final note on Baldung, who was of all painters the one to realize to the fullest the horrifying potential of the nude as a vehicle to evoke the horrors of Hell, as commissioned by the church with the intention of using such images to frighten and keep subservient its mostly illiterate flock. But while Baldung managed this perfectly well in his Death and the Maiden, or even his Vanitas of 1529, still the Botticelli Birth of Venus finally gave even him the courage to break from his bonds and create a great work of true eroticism, a veritable forerunner to the sexiest of our strippers even today, in his Three Graces of 1544, which I don't believe for an instant that he ever would have done if not for Botticelli.
Vanitas: 1529
by Hans Baldung
The Three Graces by Hans Baldung
In Greek mythology, a Charis is one of several Charites or "Graces", goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. They ordinarily numbered three, from youngest to oldest: Aglaea ("Beauty"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer"). In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the "Graces."
The Charites were usually considered the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, though they were also said to be daughters of Dionysus and Aphrodite or of Helios and the naiad Aegle. Homer wrote that they were part of the retinue of Aphrodite. The Charites were also associated with the underworld and the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The river Cephissus near Delphi was sacred to them.
On the representation of the Graces, Pausanias wrote:
"Who it was who first represented the Graces naked, whether in sculpture or in painting, I could not discover. During the earlier period, certainly, sculptors and painters alike represented them draped. At Smyrna, for instance, in the sanctuary of the Nemeses, above the images have been dedicated Graces of gold, the work of Bupalus; and in the Music Hall in the same city there is a portrait of a Grace, painted by Apelles. At Pergamus likewise, in the chamber of Attalus, are other images of Graces made by Bupalus; and near what is called the Pythium there is a portrait of Graces, painted by Pythagoras the Parian. Socrates too, son of Sophroniscus, made images of Graces for the Athenians, which are before the entrance to the Acropolis. Also, Socrates was known to have destroyed his own work as he progressed deeper into his life of philosophy and search of the conscious due to his iconoclastic attitude towards art and the like. All these are alike draped; but later artists, I do not know the reason, have changed the way of portraying them. Certainly to-day sculptors and painters represent Graces naked."
During the Renaissance, a Roman statue group of the three graces in the Piccolomini library in Duomo di Siena inspired most themes.
The Charites are depicted together with several other mythological figures in Sandro Botticelli's painting Primavera. Raphael also pictured them in a painting now housed in Chantilly in France. Among other artistic depictions, they are the subject of famous sculptures by Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen.
There have been many and varied depictions of the Graces over many centuries, but most of them seem to have two common characteristics. They are three in number and shown in the nude or at least with the implication of nudity. The following are a few examples of such representations.
Senex Magister
The Three Graces in a First Century Fresco at Pompeii
The Three Graces: 1535
by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Three Graces: 1639
by Paul Rubens
The Three Graces by Raffael
The Three Graces,
from Carle Van Loo: 1763
The Three Graces
by Antonio Canova
Three Graces
(A More Modern View or Simply a Copy)
I also wish to add a footnote to the Botticelli story, before continuing on my passage through time. Giorgio Vassari was the name of the first ever connoisseur/critic, who actually lived at the time of the Italian Renaissance. Well, he found the vaguely implied landscape in the background of the Birth of Venus so crude and cursory that he wrote that Botticelli had "probably simply thrown a sponge at his canvas to produce such a background." Just look at those beautifully rendered leaves, that make you feel the presence of the trees and Nature herself and then think of the artist who had painted them as a forerunner to Jackson Pollock. No, I can't either.
However, a little to redeem poor Vassari, let me tell you what he said of Michelangelo:
"Oh, truly happy age of ours! Oh, blessed artists! For you must call yourselves fortunate, since in your own lifetime you have been able to rekindle the dim lights of your eyes from a source of such clarity, and to see everything that was difficult made simple by such a marvelous and singular artist!"
Yes, I think we could go along with that, Giorgio. We definitely love Michelangelo too.
Madonna of the Feathers
© Anthony Christian
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The perfect symmetry of the nude, the obsession of Ingres, has been felt and brilliantly expressed by sculptors from the Venus di Milo to Canova and even Rodin. The perfect balance of it has often been beautifully described in movement by some of the great dancers, from Maya Plisitskaya to Jean Butler. For me, when truly great, the choreographer can be likened to an artist, the difference being that instead of translating the body into another medium, he uses the body as a medium. No one makes this potential more clear - or breathtakingly beautiful - than Mats Eck, the Swedish choreographer. What a ballet he would create, were the dancers all nude.
And so with the Nude, an artist is faced with all these possibilities and challenges. The sexy nude, that makes you desire her, as most often does Boucher; the beautiful nude that causes you just to admire her, as does Ingres. Then there is the nude that makes you feel yes, Woman is indeed our best friend and best hope of warmth, succor and encouragement in life, as Rembrandt often makes us feel. And finally there are the nudes of Rubens, perhaps the closest to the Goddess in art, that makes us realize that it is from Woman that we all spring, she is the origin of our physical life force, and we love her on the most profound level, tinged with an awe that is akin to worship, but saved from that by our desire for her as sister and lover.
All this is the artist's heritage when he approaches the subject of the nude, especially the female nude. And it seems to me, the female nude being my favorite chosen subject for my art, that as we try so hard and passionately to express her, she actually joins us and shares in the challenges, the anguish and the joys of being expressed in paint.
THE CONTROVERSIAL NUDE
Eve
© Anthony Christian
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A loss of belief in the purity of the human body was encouraged - even caused - by Christian dogma and the introduction of original sin into the human psyche. Thus by the Middle Ages, the nude came to symbolize the very opposite of all it had stood for in ancient times, namely ideals of fineness and beauty, and expressions of appreciation and admiration of God's creations, albeit it expressed through the male nude. Through religion, mostly enforced, the body came to represent nothing more than a potent reminder of temptations to sin and resulting eternal damnation, or to some, the troubling transience of human life.
Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror: 1515
by Bellini
Portrait of a Nude Woman: ca 1518
by Raphael
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Nude Mona Lisa
While on the one hand the nude has inspired great enthusiasm, on the other it has caused at least as great controversy and scandal. Even in this day and age of so much relative freedom, the nude in art can attract anything from jeering titters to moralizing posture-masters. However, at least one does not expect actually to be tortured or executed for one's efforts any more, and so progress is definitely being made.
Nothing in Art is so surrounded by hypocrisy as the Nude. Often the books that reproduce it even feel obliged to justify themselves by defining the difference between the naked and the nude, thus endowing the latter with an aura of sanctity. I must admit, I would take my hat off to anyone who could do that and still include a reproduction in their book of Boucher's "Mademoiselle Murphy". And yet trying to give a student an honest idea of the range of the greatest nudes that have been created over the last 500 years and not to include it would be, in my opinion, totally unacceptable.
Blond Odalisque L' Odalisque Blonde: 1752
by François Boucher
The painting is also known as the Back Nude of Mlle O'Murphy
The French term for a drawing or painting from life is "academie," emphasizing what has in fact been the primary function of art academies since they were founded in the Florence of the Renaissance. By the Seventeenth Century, countless academies were set up in Italy and France simply as places where people could go and find a naked model to gaze upon, while ostensibly studying their artistic growth. The real purpose of studying the nude however, was primarily so that artists could achieve an understanding of human proportions, which was the basis of all classical art. The personal spark, or genius, that would cause an individual artist to become passionately engrossed in something as subtle as the rendering of light on flesh, or the very texture of that flesh, was in fact the very thing that, until the advent of so-called modern art, would eventually make genius recognizable and separate the greatest works from the adequate or even the mediocre.
Salome
© Anthony Christian
Until perhaps about 1900, the time I consider the Intellect to have taken over the Spirit in Art, the nude was regarded not as a pictorial reality but as a subject transformed into a vehicle of expression. The nude female was used to represent Nature, deities in mythology or, especially in the Northern Renaissance which clung to medieval concepts for longer than their Southern brothers, Woman was used to symbolize temptation. In fact, so much did the Nude become the most central and popular subject of Art itself, it wasn't long before the very image of the artist was automatically imagined as a rake wearing a beret and not much else while seducing the endless stream of nubile - naked - girls who streamed through his studio to "model." Even though that image of the artist as a Pan chasing all his wood-nymphs merely to seduce and sample them is gone now, believe me that was most people's idea of an artist until relatively recently. And it was an idea held often with a degree of envy, usually by the most vociferous amongst the critics of the "lewd" and "immoral" canvases that are universally considered today amongst our greatest cultural treasures.
The model in the artist's studio has always provoked controversy. An anecdote that I have always enjoyed is the one in which a student of Rembrandt, once found by that Master cavorting with their model, insisted in his defense that he had only taken off his clothes to comfort the poor girl and make her feel his Adam against her Eve. Rembrandt reportedly kicked them both out of his studio, but if that is the indeed the case, one can imagine him doing so whilst covering up a grin all the same. That having been said, women were not "officially" allowed to model in public art schools until 1850. Before that, any woman posing for an artist was automatically considered little short of a prostitute, and often accused of such.
The human figure, especially unclothed, has fascinated artists since times of antiquity; from being unclothed, the body is naked and, entering Art at that stage it becomes the Nude. The Nude is something for us to gaze upon, either with admiration or repulsion, but whichever it is we probably look at the nude figure with more complex attitudes influencing our opinion of it than we might look at any other subject in Art. Influencing our response enormously will be our own gender, and then the gender of the subject of the painting we are looking at. Finally, there will also most likely be a layer of conditioning, as in most countries of the world people are brought up to believe there are very specific ways in which they must regard the naked human body, in life as well as in Art.
With all these factors to contend with, the artist has his work cut out to have even the slightest chance of his work being appreciated, let alone liked! Happily for us, many artists through time have managed to rise above these conditions and difficulties and remain true to the power of their own personal inspirations, so strong that they have managed to paint from that original unspoiled and pure point of view, to give us our masterpieces, our very culture. Over the centuries, we in the Western world at least, have arrived at a more open state of mind which finally allows us to appreciate openly many of the great works of art created by artists under the above described circumstances for an extremely inhibited - and inhibiting - audience.
Crucifixion of the Female Principle
by Honey Potter
After Christianity was established, so too original sin had to be established in people's minds so that they would form complexes towards their bodies and the nude figure that would make it impossible to enjoy it. That conditioning took about 1,000 years and is known as the Dark Ages. During that time virtually no art was created to speak of, let alone any nudes. During this same period, in order to completely subjugate the Female to the will of the male, several million women and girls - it is estimated by historians to be about 5 million, but could not be less - were hideously put to death on the pretext of witchcraft if they had as much as an idea of their own, until her will was finally broken and she became completely subordinate to the male will, especially to the religious leader, from pope to village priest, who controlled her life from then on. This process is referred to by historians as the destruction of the Female Principle, and led to Honey Potter's recent 21st Century masterpiece, "The Crucifixion of the Female Principle".
Madrid 'Fall of Man' (1628-29
by Paul Rubens
Rubens was in Madrid for eight months in 1628-1629. In addition to diplomatic negotiations, he executed several important works for Philip IV and private patrons. He also began a renewed study of Titian's paintings, copying numerous works including the Madrid 'Fall of Man' (1628-29). During this stay, he befriended the court painter Diego Velázquez. The two planned to travel to Italy together the following year. Rubens, however, returned to Antwerp and Velázquez made the journey without him.
Thematic: 'The Fall'
The Fall of Man, or simply "The Fall," in Christian doctrine refers to the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God, to a state of guilty disobedience to God. In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve live at first with God in a paradise, but are then deceived or tempted by the serpent to eat fruit from the 'Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil', which had been forbidden them by God. After doing so they become ashamed of their nakedness, and God consequently expelled them from paradise. The Fall is not mentioned by name in the Bible, but the story of disobedience and expulsion is recounted in both Testaments in different ways. The Fall can refer to the wider theological inferences for all humankind as a consequence of Eve and Adam's original sin.
Question: Why does nudity become the symbol of shame?
Question: Why does Eve (the female principle) become the temptress of evil?
Kenneth Clark once pointed out that nakedness is you or me getting out of the bath; the Nude is a category that is created for us in Art, and made as appealing to us as possible. In this day and age of the magazine and film and a million images a day confronting us of women in every state of undress and uninhibited erotic posture, how could anyone still paint a nude that might appeal to anyone anymore? A nude who is static, without movement or flashing lights, without implication of masturbation or penetration? Without hype? Who could paint a nude that might still please, fascinate, captivate and finally even satisfy the viewer? That has been my challenge and a voyage of discovery for nearly fifty years. And during that time, as I have painted, and more historians have theorized, and art has sunk to lower levels than anyone ever dreamed might be possible, the wonderful works I have mentioned in this article have remained quietly on the walls of the great museums in which they are housed, still beautiful, glorious and perfect in their way.
The Bath: 1917
by Robert Spencer
Bathers: 1875
by Paul Cezanne
The Bathers: 1887
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The Harem Bathing
by Jean Leon Gerome
The Teaser of the Narghile: ca 1898
by Jean Leon Gerome
Conclusion
While writing this article, I have been able to show you one or two examples of my own Nudes that were influenced by various Masters I was writing about. However, some of my favorite studies that I have achieved thus far, on a path that I hope will produce perhaps a few more on the more monumental scale of my Bathsheba, I have painted some which I think fit in with the principles and concepts of this article to the point where I should like to show them here. For example, I have talked about and shown several examples of Adam and Eve. While I do intend eventually to create a composition of this subject I have thus far only got as far as Eve. While she is so unconventionally posed and shown - and therefore didn't fit anywhere in the article - still this image remains one of our most popular and evidently well liked on our website, and so here she is.
Bathsheba
© by Anthony Christian
Eve
© by Anthony Christian
I am lucky enough to have found the most wonderful model. We are living on a 2,000 acre estate in the middle of Yorkshire, a ten minute drive at least to the nearest small village, and so meeting anyone without an appointment is unlikely and rare. However, Vicky came to us through a series of marvelous "laceworks" of Fate and has modeled for us for some years.
Vicky is a horse girl; she looks after them, is a brilliant vet, rider, and show-jumper. Perhaps for this reason her body was perfect for both Fanny's purposes and my own. She is small and slim and very fit, as of course riders have to be. After we met her, and I had proposed that she should model for me, she came over to discuss it with us, (and make sure I wasn't dangerous!) and after a while when we had concluded the essentials of our discussion, my wife Fanny said to her, "Come on then, get your kit off." Vicky obliged and we were both surprised, impressed and delighted by the body that suddenly appeared. Everything about her was lovely, from her proportions, (which we have just learned in the article have been important to artists forever!) to the gracefulness which came naturally to her. Also, we discovered even during the first sitting, that Vicky had a natural aptitude for getting into and holding virtually any pose, no matter how difficult; an artist's dream.
During the following month, Vicky got into the rhythm of modeling for me for two days a week. Occasionally, while we were working, Fanny would come into the studio, either to give me a message or offer Vicky a tea - like Fanny, Vicky loves her tea! - and Fanny became fascinated by how Vicky looked while modeling. She asked her if she would mind her taking some photographs of us while we worked, sort of "model and artist" kind of pictures. Vicky didn't mind in the slightest. The success of these first pictures led Fanny to being so excited by them and their potential that she then asked Vicky if she would come one extra day a week to model for her.
Again, Vicky didn't mind, as we had all become such good friends by then anyway, and she happened to have a lull in her very full and active life at that moment in time - luckily for us. And so Fanny started taking the most marvelous pictures of Vicky. And during her various experiments, out came this feather, an object we have countless samples of lying around, as indeed we have pheasants running into our garden all the time to get away from the hunters who shoot them . They know they are safe with us (vegetarians.)
Anyway, Fanny involved this feather in her photos and the result we all found quite sensational. They led to the "Fanergies," and to me, at a later sitting, starting to incorporate the same idea in my work. In one or two of the resulting images I find it particularly successful, adding a quality that I could not possibly have arrived at with any alternative that I could imagine, that doesn't veer towards an eroticism greater than I wish for in these particular works. And so...
Another favorite of mine I always considered a preparatory sketch for 'Rubens' Judgment of Paris' - only Aphrodite and Athena , not to mention Paris himself, haven't arrived yet. Also, just as I was painting her, that famous feather was floating around and happened to arrive at the position it is shown in just as my brush was able to get to it.
The Judgment of Paris: ca 1639
by Rubens
The Judgment of Paris ca: 1636
by Rubens
Rubens follows the story of the Judgment of Paris as told by Lucian in the 'Judgment of the Goddesses'.
Alterations to this work show that Rubens first painted an earlier moment in the story when Mercury ordered the goddesses to undress; the final stage shows Paris awarding the golden apple to Venus, who stands between Minerva and Juno; Mercury stands behind Paris; above is the Fury, Alecto.
Sometimes I am interested to see just to what degree one can arrive at an image of beauty by virtue of a pose. I find "Sophie Rolled Over" to be one of the most successful of my attempts to achieve this.
Sophie Rolled Over
© by Anthony Christian
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I was amazed by the incredible variety of poses Vicky got into once she was in a basic pose of kneeling with her back to me. This is the first of a planned series of nine, in which I will show the beauty of the pose in each case merely by the slightest movement here, the slightest movement there.
Fair Feather Friend
© by Anthony Christian
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Fair Feather Friend (Detail)
© by Anthony Christian
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Back-View Nude with Feather
© by Anthony Christian
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Getting away from the feather altogether for a moment, something of interest I thought you might like to see, is a painting I did quite a few years ago, of my then Chinese wife as Diana the Huntress. It appears in fact in the "A. Christian" book on my work, published in Hong Kong and Tokyo in 1991. About three years after having painted this work, although not for sale, I was exhibiting it in Bombay (now Mumbai.) Occasionally, when I was visiting the gallery during the duration of that show I would sit and look at some of my work, trying to imagine what it was like to do so for an average visitor. As I gazed at this nude, I found myself wishing that it wasn't so closed in, and I determined to take it home after the show and open it up. Although one or two people who saw it later said that they preferred the starkness of how it had been originally, most other people, and certainly myself, prefer it as it is now.
Diana the Huntress
© by Anthony Christian
Another friend I had who modeled for me during a brief visit to this country from Russia where she was from was Anya, whom we called Annie. Loving ballerinas as much as I do, I built this composition around the little ballerina in the background and the apples I had already painted on the top right, with the original intention of copying (more or less) the Cranach "Eve" some years before. I had abandoned that idea simply because I became too busy with too many other projects to make any copies, which I do from time to time just to own certain images which I love that much. I love the way this particular painting came out, Annie's body is exactly as she was.
Annie
© by Anthony Christian
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And for the last ones I want to show we must return to that feather. The first one is the only nude I have done of Vicky that is more or less life sized, as well as full-length. Some rosehips were just lying around and they gave the work its title, "Rosehips." I was very pleased with the skin tones and the pose, but still felt I could get more out of that back view idea.
Rosehips
© by Anthony Christian
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Salome
© by Anthony Christian
That led to what is probably my favorite single nude that I have painted thus far. I have intended to paint a series of Salome dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils, which will of course be a series of seven paintings, each one showing her shedding a further veil until, in the seventh, I will find the most beautiful pose for her to arrive at the end of her most famous dance - the beginnings of striptease, I have always thought. But seeing Vicky in this pose one day, I found it so beautiful a posture and so expressive that I painted it anyway. Her reflective-ness I suddenly realized could be Salome trying to mentally work out the steps, or postures of the dance she was planning. Thus I titled it "Salome, the First Choreographer." I am showing it in its frame, as I think the combination is so extraordinary. For any details as to where and how I acquired that frame, and many of my other beautiful and unique frames, see the website and "The Artist At Work" section.
Article: by Anthony Christian
Source - The Nude in Art: The Female Nude
Source - Anthony Christian and Marian Fanny Christian
The Sleeping Venus: (1944)
by Paul Delvaux
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La Belle Rosina (1847)
by Antoine Wiertz
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In posing a strapping young nude contemplating a skeleton her size, Wiertz vividly confronts the two fundamental forces, love and aggression, Eros and death, which, according to Sigmund Freud, unceasingly battle for supremacy over the human mind.
I am not sure how to take such an interpretation as this especially when it is coming from Sigmund Freud. It is hard for me not to be suspicious of one who seems to hold the female principle responsible for every or most evil in human nature. Just my opinion.
Senex Magister
Other Examples of the Feminine Nude Mostly of Renaissance Art
King Candaules by Jean Leon Gerome
Candaules also known as Myrsilos was a king of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia from 735 BC to 718 BC. He succeeded Meles and was followed by Gyges. His name is the origin of the term candaulism, for a sexual practice attributed to him by legend.
Several stories of how the Heraclid Dynasty of Candaules ended and the Mermnadae dynasty of Gyges began has been related by different authors throughout history, mostly in mythical tones. In Plato's Republic, Gyges used a magical ring to become invisible and usurp the throne, a plot device which reappeared in numerous myths and works of fiction throughout history, perhaps most famously in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings saga. The earliest story, related by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE, has Candaules betrayed and executed by his wife in a cautionary tale against pride and possession.
According to The Histories of Herodotus, Candaules bragged of his wife's incredible beauty to his favorite bodyguard Gyges. "It appears you don't believe me when I tell you how lovely my wife is," said Candaules. "A man always believes his eyes better than his ears; so do as I tell you - contrive to see her naked."
Gyges refused; he did not wish to dishonor the Queen by seeing her nude body. He also feared what the King might do to him if he did accept.
Candaules was insistent, and Gyges had no choice but to obey. Candaules detailed a plan by which Gyges would hide behind a door in the royal bedroom to observe the Queen disrobing before bed. Gyges would then leave the room while the Queen's back was turned.
Candaules King of Lydia Shows his Wife to Gyges by Jean Leon Gerome
Another View of the Queen's Disgrace and Shame
That night, the plan was executed. However, the Queen saw Gyges as he left the room, and recognized immediately that she had been betrayed and shamed by her own husband. She silently swore to have her revenge, and began to arrange her own plan.
The next day, the Queen summoned Gyges to her chamber. Although Gyges thought nothing of the routine request, she confronted him immediately with her knowledge of his misdeed and her husband's. "One of you must die," she declared. "Either my husband, the author of this wicked plot; or you, who have outraged propriety by seeing me naked."
Gyges pleaded with the Queen not to force him to make this choice. She was relentless, and eventually he chose to betray the King so that he should live.
The Queen prepared for Gyges to kill Candaules by the same manner in which she was shamed. Gyges hid behind the door of the bedroom chamber with a knife provided by the Queen, and killed him in his sleep. Gyges married the Queen and became King, and father to the Mermnad Dynasty.
Danae by Rembrandt Rijn: 1640
In Greek mythology, Danae was the daughter of Acrisius (Acrisius was the king of Argos). As Danae and Acrisius were members of a royal family, it is not surprising that there should be prophecies associated with the future - and indeed, there was a threatening message for this house. According to the prophecy, the son Danae was destined to bear would be instrumental in the death of his grandfather, Acrisius.
In order to prevent this event from taking place, King Acrisius locked his daughter in an inaccessible tower, thereby removing her from contact with any potential suitors. Or so he thought...
The god Zeus, who always had an eye for female charms, was struck by the beauty of Danae, and desired her. Zeus therefore transformed himself into a shower of gold, and in this form impregnated Danae. The result of this union of human and divine was the great Greek hero Perseus.
But, of course, the birth of Perseus does not signal the end of this story. In ancient Greece, fate was difficult to elude. However, that did not stop Acrisius from trying anyway, for he sent Danae and the infant Perseus off in an attempt to rid himself of the child who would be the cause of his death. Naturally, both mother and son survived, and Perseus went on to achieve fame as a hero. Eventually, Perseus unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy told before his birth.
Destiny of Marie de Medici
by Paul Rubens
The first painting of the narrative cycle, The Destiny of Marie de' Medici, is a twisting composition of the three Fates on clouds beneath the celestial figures of Juno and Jupiter.
The Fates are depicted as beautiful, nude goddesses spinning the thread of Marie de' Medici's destiny; their presence at Marie's birth assures her prosperity and success as a ruler that is unveiled in the cycle's subsequent panels. In Greek and Roman mythology, one Fate spun the thread, another measured its length, and the third cut the thread. In Rubens' depiction, however, the scissors necessary for this cutting are omitted, stressing the privileged and immortal character of the Queen's life. The last panel of the cycle, in accordance with this theme, illustrates Queen Marie rising up to her place as queen of heaven, having achieved her lifelong goal of immortality through eternal fame.
Early interpretations explained Juno's presence in the scene through her identity as the goddess of childbirth. Later interpretations suggested, however, that Rubens used Juno to represent Marie de' Medici's alter ego, or avatar, throughout the cycle. Jupiter accordingly signifies the allegory of Henri IV, the promiscuous husband.
Feast of Venus
by Paul Rubens
Rubens's last decade was spent in and around Antwerp. Major works for foreign patrons still occupied him, such as the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House at Inigo Jones's Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored more personal artistic directions.
In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. Hélène inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630's, including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), The Three Graces (Prado, Madrid) and The Judgment of Paris (Prado, Madrid).
Grecian Interior
by Jean Leon Gerome
A Roman Slave Market
by Jean-Leon Gerome
Gérôme painted six slave-market scenes set in either ancient Rome or 19th-century Istanbul. The subject provided him with an opportunity to depict facial expressions and to undertake figurative studies of sensual beauty. He painted another view of the same event--"Slave Market in Rome" (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum)--in which the viewer looks over the heads of the spectators towards the slave.
Slave Market in Rome
by Jean-Leon Gerome
Cleopatra before Caesar
by Jean Leon Gerome
'Cleopatra Before Caesar' is one of Gerome's most famous masterpieces. In it, he portrayed the persecuted eighteen year old queen of Egypt, Cleopatra VII, suddenly emerging from a rolled carpet brought into the general's presence by her slave. Julius Caesar had landed in Egypt on October 2, 48 BCE while Cleopatra was attempting to regain her throne from her younger brother, Ptolemy, who had previously ousted her.
Apparently Caesar was charmed by the gesture, as the following morning Ptolemy arrived to find Caesar and Cleopatra greeting him together. He was arrested, and soon Caesar and Cleopatra were engaged with Ptolemy's adherents in the Alexandrian War. This was yet another struggle in the series of wars that culminated in the end of the Roman Republic 18 years later.
Harem Pool by Jean Leon Gerome
The Vision of Faust by Luis Ricardo Falero: 1878
Phryne before the Areopagus
by Jean Leon Gerome
Phryne was a courtesan, or hetaira, who lived in Athens in the 4th century BC. Rich enough to offer to rebuild the walls of Thebes, she was also shady enough to find herself up before the Areopagus on a charge of murder. Her lawyer, failing to make any headway with the usual bag of legal tricks, took the extreme step of getting her to strip: the judges, overcome by her beauty, acquitted her on the spot.
The relevant point being, that beautiful things need to be seen in the flesh.
Phryne is said to have modeled for Praxiteles and Apelles, and several Victorian artists took up the challenge of painting her. The most famous picture is Gérome's 'Phryné devant l'Aréopage' (1861, now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg), in which our girl is shown covering her face at the very moment that her cloak is removed. This pose was heavily criticized, as it was felt that beauty on such a scale should transcend mere modesty. From what one knows of Phryne -- not really a shy girl -- this seems to be a fair criticism of the painting; from what one knows of 4th-Century Athens, large bribes probably came into the story somewhere.
The Glade by Julius LeBlanc Stewart: 1900
Venus and Cupid: 1509
by Lucas Cranach the Elder
This is the earliest of Cranach's mythological paintings and the first in Germany depicting Venus and Cupid. At the top a poem in Latin explains the meaning of the picture. The composition is strongly influenced by Dürer.
Venus with a Mirror
by Titian: ca 1555
NOTA BENE
The following essay on The Reclining Nude may seem a bit repetitive after Anthony Christian's excellent article on The Female Nude. Even though Richard Brafford covers much that has already been discussed by Mr. Christian, I also believe this essay of Richard Brafford provides further insight into what has become a standard mode and form in artistic expression today.
Senex Magister
The Reclining Nude
by Richard Brafford
The female nude in art is one of the many artistic innovations of the 15th-century Renaissance in Western Europe. Commonly placed in a composition that accentuates the glow of their skin, they are seen close up and usually straight on, their stylized bodies span the entire width of the canvas, and their hands and feet normally remain inside the picture's frame. Sometimes asleep, they most often face the viewer.
This innovation, pioneered by the Venetian painter Giorgione, led directly to the work of artists such as Titian, Rubens, Goya, Manet and many others, until the genre evolved far from its original interpretation.
The first female reclining nude in European painting is Giorgione's The Sleeping Venus, painted in 1510. It pictures a reclining nude and is one of the first modern works of art in which the female figure is the principal and only subject of the picture.
Giorgione's Sleeping Venus is to the development of the painted nude as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1505) is to the development of the painted portrait. It inaugurated the nude in a landscape setting as one of the great themes of European art. Giorgione's contouring line and modeling of paint suggests true feeling and form. Not painted for sexual desire or erotic stimulation, she is depicted as a goddess sleeping and unaware you are peeping in on her. Giorgione has made us the spectators, voyeurs into her private world. He has taken this subject seriously and for the first time the female nude is painted poetry with a new visual language.
The scenery of Giorgione's Sleeping Venus is characterized by contrasts: she is set underneath a protective, lush hill on the left, an approaching storm in the far center and a multilevel villa on the right. Yet the effect is completely unified.
The very presence of the beautiful Venus is one of the mysteries of European painting. It is the outstanding masterpiece of the Venetian Renaissance, the summit of Giorgione's creative career. However, he died before he could complete it, therefore, the painting may have been completed by his pupil, Titian.
By studying the early works of Titian, it is evident he was under the spell of Giorgione, with whom he had a close relationship. In 1506-08 Titian assisted Giorgione with fresco decoration in Venice, then after Giorgione's early death in 1510, it fell to Titian to complete a number of his unfinished paintings. The authorship of some of Giorgione's famous works is still disputed: the two styles are somewhat a fusion of Titian's worldliness with Giorgione's painted poetry.
Countless variations of the Sleeping Venus have followed through the centuries. Cranach's River Nymph at the Fountain (1518) shows how even far lesser artists took up the motif, which had now become a favorite of German aristocrats.
During the 1530's, as Titian's fame was spreading throughout Europe, he first met the Emperor Charles V of Italy and painted his portrait. Charles was so pleased with it that he appointed Titian court painter and elevated him to the rank of Count Palatine and Knight of the Golden Spur, an unprecedented honor for a painter. In 1538 Titian painted the celebrated Venus of Urbino for Prince Charles of Urbino.
Charles V
Venus of Urbino
Titian's Venus is a complete contrast of Giorgione's subtle poetry and idyllic remoteness. This Venus is not an unattainable goddess, unaware of our presence. Titian paints his Venus awake and looking at the viewer with a sensual allure in her eyes. She is depicted in a room within an opulent palace. In the background her servants are assembling her clothing to dress her. Lying next to her is her pet dog, a symbol of fidelity. Is she a goddess? A princess? The mistress of Charles? Scholars are still contemplating Titian's intention.
The reclining nude continued to evolve with the great Flemish painter Rubens. In 1630 he depicts a scene inspired by Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso, where a voluptuous, "Rubenesque" Sleeping Angelica is visited by a hermit whose internal struggle is symbolized by the leering imp or demon behind her.
Sleeping Angelica
In Venus at Her Mirror (1644) Velasquez shows us a Venus with her back to us, admiring herself in the mirror, and we see how Venus has now become absorbed in her own vanity.
Venus at Her Mirror
Boucher's typical paintings turned mythological subject matter into wittily happy scenes, such as his charming painted female commissioned by King Louis XV of France in 1750 of his mistress Louisa O'Murphy. The reclining nude is no longer a goddess of love; she is a woman you make love to.
Louisa O'Murphy
Goya's Naked Maja (painted around 1800) ushered in a period where the reclining nude was not a goddess, princess, mistress or pampered woman. The Maja is a woman of questionable identity. Is she someone's wife or lover, a working model merely posing for money, or something else? The painting was seized in 1808 by order of King Ferdinand VI of Spain , and in 1813, the Inquisition confiscated the painting as an "obscene work." Nonetheless, Goya's interpretation of the nude was later followed by other painters, especially in France .
Nude Maja: ca 1800
Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda): ca 1799-1800
Goya's Majas (fashionable young women) are two of his most famous and most discussed masterpieces. Their date, for whom they were painted and the identity of the model are problems that are still not satisfactorily solved. The first mention of 'The Nude Maja' is in the diary of the medalist Pedro Gonzalez de Sepulveda describing a visit in November 1800 to the house of the Minister, Manuel Godoy, Goya's patron and the target of his satire: 'In an apartment or inner cabinet are pictures of various Venuses... (among them) a naked one by Goya, without design or delicacy of coloring' and Velázquez's 'famous Venus'. There is no mention of 'The Clothed Maja' and presumably it was not there, probably not yet painted.
Godoy 's position at court and his known taste for paintings of female nudes (there were many others in his collection) makes it likely that both Majas were painted for him. An alternative suggestion is that they were in the Duchess of Alba's collection and acquired by Godoy after her death, together with Velázquez's 'The Toilet of Venus' and other pictures. Goya's relations with the Duchess of Alba have made her the most popular candidate as a model for the Majas, at least as a source of inspiration, supported by the many drawings of herself and members of her household he made during his visit to the Duchess's country estate. The lack of resemblance to the heads of Goya's earlier portraits of her is usually explained by the need to conceal her identity. Whoever the model may have been and for whomever the pictures were made, Goya's nude Maja is unique and unprecedented in his oeuvre and in Spain, even in Europe, in his time. Velázquez's Venus, which Goya must have seen in the Duchess of Alba's collection, is its only comparable predecessor in the life-like portrayal of the female nude. But where the Velázquez is also a mythological painting, Goya's 'The Nude Maja' makes no pretence of being anything but the rendering of a naked woman lying on a couch.
Clothed Maja: ca 1800-03
Though it was no doubt painted earlier, the first record of 'The Clothed Maja' and the first mention of the paintings together is in an inventory of Godoy's collection dated 1 January 1808, where they are called 'gypsies'. In an article on Los Caprichos published in Cadiz in 1811, it is as Goya's Venuses that they are mentioned among his most admired works (they are also called Venuses in Goya's biography by his son). The next mention of the Majas is towards the end of 1814, when Goya was denounced to the Inquisition for being the author of two obscene paintings in the sequestrated collection of the Chief Minister Godoy, 'one representing a naked woman on a bed...and the other a woman dressed as a Maja on a bed'. On 16 May 1815, the artist was summoned to appear before a Tribunal 'to identify them and to declare if they are his works, for what reason he painted them, by whom they were commissioned and what were his intentions'. Unfortunately Goya's declaration has not yet come to light.
As a pair of paintings of a single figure in an identical pose, the Majas are a highly original invention. The theory that the clothed woman was intended as a cover for the naked one is very credible. It is not surprising that the Majas attracted the attention of the Inquisition in Madrid in 1814. As late as 1865 Manet's Olympia (which bears such a close resemblance to The Naked Maja that it is difficult to believe that the artist had not seen Goya's painting) created a furious scandal when it was exhibited in the Paris Salon.
Ingres makes a strong concession to the contemporary romantic taste for the exotic. There is no question regarding the identity of his Odalisque; as the name implies, an inhabitant of a Turkish harem. Yet her gaze is riveting; despite her position in life, she almost mocks the viewer, making us feel vaguely uneasy. Ingres paints her in his own sculpturesque style, but a real woman nonetheless.
The Grande Odalisque
Commissioned by Caroline Murat, the Queen of Naples and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, La Grande Odalisque was intended to accompany another Ingres' nude which she owned: Sleeping Woman, Nude. An Odalisque was a female, usually a slave, from a Turkish harem and Ingres painted several works on the subject, although La Grande... is by far his most famous; it now hangs in the Louvre. Several reports maintain that Caroline was the model for the Odalisque but, while she may have been an inspiration, it's unlikely to have been her.
By 1863, Manet's Olympia is no nymph or mythological being; she is a modern Parisian woman. Manet's intent was to continue with the tradition started by Giorgione by bringing the idea 180 degrees opposite from a sleeping Venus to a common Parisian whore receiving flowers, probably from another woman's husband. The setting is a typical Parisian apartment and next to her is a cat, a symbol of infidelity. Olympia looks at the spectator as if to say "Here I am and what are you going to do about it?"
Olympia: 1863
With Blue Nude (1928) Matisse was inspired by his travels to, Algiers, Casablanca and Africa. He paints his odalisque with unashamed voyeurism in the Fauvist style, which is freer and more abstract, with an expressive pallet of vibrant, unnatural colors.
Blue Nude
by Henri Matisse: 1907
The American artist John Singer Sargent is best known for his portraits, but during his sojourns in Venice, Spain, Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa, and in the Middle East, he mastered drawing just about any subject including the female and male nude. Traditionally, male nudes are standing and not shown in what could be seen as a submissive pose unless they are dead or defeated. Here, Sargent turns the tables by putting a man in a scenario usually reserved for women.
Tommies Bathing
Sargent employed a high, voyeuristic viewpoint. Here, however, it is enhanced by the proximity of the men to each other and their state of complete relaxation and obliviousness. With impressive technical facility he captured the shadows cast across the bodies by the blades of grass.
Thomas E. McKeller
What is the first thing that flashes through your mind when you hear the name John Singer Sargent? Probably exquisite portraits, for which he is most known. Memorable portrayals of elegant ladies, distinguished men, upper class folk dressed to the nines in their satin and velvet. With Sargent, you don't generally think of a male nude, let alone a full frontal male nude.
But few artists can resist an inspiring subject, even if it deviates from their usual genre. John Singer Sargent was no exception. We all know that a muse can happen upon an artist at anytime, anywhere. A bar, a street corner, a party. In Sargent's case, the unexpected encounter occurred in 1916, in an elevator at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston.
The striking, muscular young man was Thomas E. McKeller, an African-American bellhop at the hotel. At first sight, Sargent was instantly enthralled by McKeller's strong physique and facial features. Soon, the young bellhop was posing for the artist, and a large scale oil painting, Thomas E. McKeller Nude Study was produced:
That pose is incredible. Very "active". First of all, Thomas is kneeling on a cushion with his arms behind him, which presents the torso with a good amount of tension and prominence. Also, his head is tilted upward and to the side, gazing to the heavens. Now let me tell you something; this guy was a great model. That is hard!! That has pain written all over it. In the knees, in the shoulders, in the neck.
The Bathers
The Polish artist Tamara Lempicka is best known for her Art Deco-styled figures featuring sexy, bedroom-eyed women rendered in haunting poses. Perhaps it was her own dramatic life mirrored in her art.
Portrait de Madame Alan Bott
Tamara de Lempicka - Self Portrait
La Fuite
Now we view a woman's interpretation of the female body. This figure is not in repose; she seems tense, perhaps even distressed. She looks like an athlete, with bold arms and strong legs. Lempicka paints her in a late Cubist style with muted colors, which was popular at the time. Is she a mythological goddess? Is she aware that we are looking upon her? Is this figure as much a mystery as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, painted almost 500 years ago?
Source: The Reclining Nude
Reclining Nudes by Various Artists
(Known and Unknown)
Eve
Femme Nue Allongee (Reclining Nude)
by Raoul Dufy
_by_Raoul_Dufy.jpg)
Blind
Louise Nude on the Sofa
by Susanne Valadon: 1895
Morning
Mother and Child
by Lovis Corinth: 1906
Nude by Amedeo Modigliani: 1917
Nude by Spencer Gore: 1910
Nude Realism
I think that the artist's use of color is what drew me to this painting. I am intrigued how these bright colors make the lines and curves of the model's back more alluring and sensual.
Senex
Pale Nude
Reclining
Reclining Nude
by Frank Duveneck
Reclining
by Julian Ritter
Reclining
by Leo Jansen
Reclining Nude
by George Hendrik Breitner
George Hendrik Breitner Online
Reclining Nude
by Richard Edward Miller
Richard Emil (Edward) Miller Online
Reclining Nude
by Richard Edward Miller
Richard Edward Miller's sumptuous images of young women in a studio interior are celebrated as some of the finest achievements of American Impressionism. The present painting, 'Reclining Nude', is an example of these paintings as an exquisitely sensual work and a mastery of rich textures and beautiful light. To look at 'Reclining Nude' is to understand why Miller's work was immediately considered an achievement.
Miller is most often associated with the Giverny Group, a cluster of ambitious painters living in France in the early twentieth century, who sought inspiration and kinship in the small town near Paris. Although all of the artists in the small town of Giverny knew each other, or were at least aware of each other, Miller's work is quite distinct from that of his contemporaries.
'Reclining Nude' is a masterpiece of the type of Impressionist paintings created in Giverny in the early twentieth century. In this work, Miller has faithfully incorporated every hallmark of the style. Miller typically chose a perspective in his studio from which he could not only paint his model, but also feature the sunny outdoors. In 'Reclining Nude', Miller's beautiful young model lies on a divan with her head thrown back and red hair cascading down. She is surrounded by beautiful diaphanous fabrics that reflect the many colors in the room. A sheer sheet is spread underneath her and wrapped around her legs as transparent curtains billow over the airy windows. Even the parasol that sits by her is made of a gauzy fabric.
The female nude was one of Richard Miller's preferred subjects, beginning in the mid-1890's when he won prizes for his work in life class at the Saint Louis School of Fine Arts, until the last years of his career in Provincetown in the early 1940's. Study of the nude was at the core of the academic training Miller received first in his native Saint Louis and later at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he enrolled for a year beginning in 1899. Miller's early Parisian nudes were soft, tenebrous figures, bathed in a golden light. Folds of gauzy fabric, gleaming copper vessels and delicate oriental ceramics became familiar props in these sensual compositions, showcasing Miller's skill as a still-life painter as well as a figure painter.
Miller did not exhibit his nudes widely. His experience in Chicago in 1914, when his Nude, exhibited at the Art Institute and recipient of the Potter Palmer Prize (Bertha Matilde Honoré), was sanctioned by the city's Police Department and Postmaster, no doubt had a dampening effect. Yet his nudes did slowly enter public collections, such as the Des Moines Association of Fine Arts in 1917 and the Rhode Island School of Design in 1920. Miller returned to the subject actively from the mid-1930's on, when he was financially secure enough to paint what he wanted. By then the genre had been enjoying a revival among American artists who turned to the traditional subject in a modern, formalist manner. Miller, who had long been interested in the formal qualities of painting created some of his most innovative work during this period.
'Reclining Nude' is a brilliant example of Miller's celebrated Giverny style. In contrast to the opalescent, smooth rendering of the young woman, the surrounding studio is painted in vivid color in a tapestry of short, dense Impressionist strokes. Miller is able to combine strong draftsmanship, lively color and bold design to create a picture that captures both Impressionist and modern elements harmoniously. Miller explored the possibilities of expanding his palette and technique. The artist "came into his own as a painter. Combining virtuosic brushwork and highly individual coloring with the subject he painted now almost exclusively--young women, singly or in pairs, in interiors--Miller established a distinctive style...Miller painted a decorative canvas that is as much an interplay of sensuous textures, sinuous contours, and color harmonies, as it is a portrait."
Although the painting is representational, the emphasis on shape, line, color and texture reveals Miller's Modernist interest in structure over subject. The painting is composed primarily of rectangular, triangular and circular shapes, whether a bent leg, round table or window pane. Miller crops the composition on the both sides of the composition, creating a sense of intimacy and enclosure for the young nude woman.
In the early 1910's Miller's palette lightened, the result of his plein air painting and growing interest in light and color, and his nudes which had become larger and more monumental in form, began to reflect the subtle pastel colors of their surroundings in a manner reminiscent of Renoir. As Miller turned to stronger and more adventurous colors--green and purple was one favored combination--he intensified the reflection of these colors on his figures' skin, creating a highly artificial, decorative surface while maintaining traditional figuration. Miller's daring use of color in 'Reclining Nude' is immediately discernible. The bright greens, pinks and yellows are characteristic colors of many Giverny Group paintings and Miller used it to great effect to provide contrast for the glowing skin and russet hair of the young woman. They are examples of the artist's artistic "license to use the colors in a highly subjective manner dictated by decorative pictorial considerations".
'Reclining Nude' is a brilliant example of Impressionism that is "not a tardy or punched-up imitation of the original style, but reflects a vigorous post-impressionist interest in surface and design. Instead of exploring reality, the works are visions of beauty based as much on the means and method of creation as on subject." 'Reclining Nude' is a truly sensuous painting--a rich mix of color, textures, and light--deserving of the adjectives "radiant" and "jubilant" that critics bestowed on Miller's Giverny paintings.
Sunbather
by Richard Edward Miller
Reclining Nude: 1928
by Suzanne Valadon
Reclining Nude
by William James Glacken
Reclining Nude
by Leo Jansen
Reclining Nude
by Vera Rockline
Reclining Nude, great purple brush strokes and red
Sleep
by Gustave Courbet: 1866
Sleeping
Sleeping
Sleeping Nude
Sleeping Nude
by Lucien Freud
Sleeping Nude
Studio Idyl
by Anders Zorn: 1919
Fantasy Art - Another Venue for Nude Art
Dreams
Early Morning
Early Morning
Eden
Emerald Garden
Golden Dawn
Morning
Silence
Tender Dawn
Seated and Standing Nudes
This is a sensual view or perspective that has always had a focus for artists.
At the Mirror
Autumn
A Woman's Back
Bathing by Hashiguchi Goyo
Contemplating a Sonnet
Curtain Please
(Actually a Pin Up)
Danae
Dreaming
Female Nude from behind by Albrecht Durer: 1495
Figure by Alfred Henry Maurer: 1928
Girl in the Bath House
Girl's Back
Jeanne by Henri Manguin
La baigneuse endormie (The Bather Sleeping)
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: 1897
_by_Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_1897.jpg)
Lady
Femme Fatale by Kees Van Dongen: 1905
Lotus
Mata Moana by Robert Henri: 1920
Mermaid
Mirror
Standing Model
Model in Backlight by Pierre Bonnard: 1908
Morning
A Miror in the Morning
Mystic Mist
Contemplating and Hidden
A Smile - An Enigma
Against the Wall
In the Bath
Naked with a Jug
Naked Woman in Front of Mirror: 1897
by Henri Toulouse Lautrec
Nastya
This was a Surprise.
Nature Morte et Statue
by Albert Andre: 1943
Nude by Georges Braque: 1908
Nude
by PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR: 1876
Nude with Batik
by Thea Proctor: 1940
Nude Woman
by Charles H. Gerbracht: 1950
Planes by Colors (aka Great Nude)
by Frantisek Kupka: 1909
_by_Frantisek_Kupka_1909.jpg)
Seated Nude
by Amedeo Modigliani: 1917
Seated Nude
by Louis Valtat: 1913
Seated Nude, Mademoiselle Rose
by Eugene Delacroix: 1824
Sitting Nude with Cushions
by August Macke: 1911
Standing Female Nude
by Alfred Henry Maurer: 1928
Standing Nude Woman
by Paul Gauguin: 1894
Study of Olympe Pelissier as Judith
by Horace Vernet: 1830
Summer Interior
by Edward Hopper: 1909
Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque
by Tom Wesselmann: 2003
Enchanted Pool
by John Henry Twachtman
The Misstress and the Servant
by Felix Vallottin: 1896
Three Nudes
by Jules Pascin: 1922
Two Girls in the Reeds
by Otto Mueller: 1926
Girl Friends
by Gustav Klimt: 1916
The White Slave
by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy: 1888
Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy Online
Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscpe
by Jean Metzinger: 1905
Venus in the Grotto
by Koloman Moser: 1915
Weeping Nude
by Eduard Munch: 1913
William Rush and his Model
by Thomas Eakins: 1908
Woman with Nude Bosom (Self Portrait)
by Suzanne Valadon
_by_Suzanne_Valadon.jpg)
Seated and Standing Nudes
Unknown Artists
Nude by the Shore
Nude Dreaming
Nude from the Back
Nude Hiding
Nude in the Field
Nude Multiplicity
Nude Overlook
The Violinist
Nude Study
Nude with a Towel
Nudist in Me
On the Window Sill
Pianist
Reaching For Another Moment
Rebecca
Red Flower
The Source
Spring, A Protest
(Protest of the 'Source')
Teenagers
The Concert
The Dark Lady
Moonlight
Torso
Thinking
Unhappy
Waterfall
Wind
Wine
Woman Figure
Wounded Warrior
Young Nude
The History of Pin-Up Art - The Art History Archive
August 1951
August 1952
Black and Blue
December 1951
December 1952
February 1951
The Girl
Julia
July 1952
July 1953
Neglige
November 1951
November 1952
September 1953
Siesta
A Last Look at Some Beautiful Paintings from Julian Ritter
Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1909, Julian Ritter grew up as a solitary youth, the only child of an aspiring Polish actress. His mother claimed his father was a Count, but she refused to reveal the man's identity. As a young boy, Julian entertained himself wandering the docks of Hamburg and dreaming of far off places. He discovered an early passion for art while sketching ships in the harbor. Julian's interest in drawing was encouraged by his teacher, and a recognized landscape painter living nearby.
Ritter's paintings reveal the reverence he has always felt for glamorous and beautiful women. 'My Showgirl' is actually Ritter with his first wife who was a Vegas showgirl in the late 30's. 'Dinner Party' was painted when he was with the movie studios in LA with some of his friends -- Olivia de Havilland, Vivian Leigh, Charlie Chaplin, Red Skelton, and others. Ritter spent the latter part of his life in Hawaii where, sadly, he died in 2000.
Anastasia
Peggy
Sisters
My Show Girl
Silver Slipper Beauty
Suzette
The Madame
The Carousel
Three Magicians
Violetta
I have attempted to provide a graphic (pictorial) narrative of a classic art form that is open and free of sexist stereotypes that a male dominated society with its socio-economic power attempts to impose on a female majority. I am sure that I have failed in that attempt and realize the impact our culture has had upon me. I will endeavor to improve myself but there are times when I find it difficult to not be seduced by the power and beauty of the 'Female'. The final pictures which I wish to include on this page probably open me to such an accusation which, I know, is justified and deserved. The problem is I am afraid - I just can't help sharing. Mea Culpa
Senex Magister
Source: Pin-up Art from The Pin-up Files: Art Archive
Source: Art Renewal Center
Source: Web Gallery of Art
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