The Strange, Sordid History of the World's First Nude Female Statue | Artnet News

Athenian sculpture and painting revered the human form, proudly displaying its naked magnificence and finding in its geometrical forms echoes of the fundamental harmonies of nature, tradition was thus begun that would climax in the Renaissance image of ‘Vitruvian Man’, the representation of the naked male figure inscribed at the centre of the cosmo

Venus of Willendorf discovered in Austria, believed to be over 25,000 years old. She was also found in different forms in Mesopotamia, Western Asia, and Northern Africa.

Think of the smooth marble of the sculpted nude, or the supple roundness of the Venus de Milo: those proportions might not be the same ones exalted today, but to viewers of the time, the flesh, like the body itself, was perfect. A portrait can thus be judged by its adherence to the ideals of proportion: its skill in transforming the naked body into

do not imagine she is a thing of the past, or of legend and history : she represents a powerful male fantasy of a highly sexual, supremely confident, alluring female offering endless pleasure and a bit of danger.

One of the main observations made about the ancient archaeological figures of women is how sexual they are, pointing us to a way of expression that was both sacred and actively sexual at once.

When Medusa was raped by Poseidon, and later murdered by Perseus, it is symbolic of the cultural subjugation of the wild and unruly feminine that she represents.

the university, as it became increasingly independent of the church, it also promoted, produced, and proliferated secular images, like the anatomists’ drawings of the breast. These were images for study, scrutiny, or contemplation—not for desire. Eliciting desire became the province of a new set of institutions purposed toward consumption rather th