Mantegna was fascinated by perspective. His radical foreshortening and realism focus attention on Christ’s wounds.
The body
His nudity references classical antiquity, but David embodies the ideals and concerns of 15th-century Florence.
Donatello, David
"He has clarity in his humanness, in his present-ness: ‘I'm here, right now, and not for long.’"
Wangechi Mutu on Egon Schiele
The female nude emerged as a genre in the Renaissance.
Titian, Venus of Urbino
Weems confronts identity, family, and the myth of home in this iconic series of photographs.
Carrie Mae Weems, Kitchen Table Series
Does a statue need to include arms or a head to be considered complete? Rodin clearly doesn’t think so.
Auguste Rodin, The Walking Man
Dumas paints from photographs, and deliberately makes her pictures strange, unsettling, and ugly.
Marlene Dumas, Models
What detail! Dürer studied the human body obsessively and spent four years working on this print. It shows.
Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
This bronze god sank to the bottom of the sea where he sat for millennia, but who is he and what can he tell us?
Artemision Zeus or Poseidon
“Stay and mourn at the monument of dead Kroisos, who raging Ares slew as he fought in the front ranks.”
Anavysos Kouros
Compare this off-balance image of the goddess of victory to earlier classical sculpture.
Nike Adjusting Her Sandal, Temple of Athena ...
Following war with the Persians, this highly naturalistic sculpture was buried out of respect.
Kritios Boy
The myth is ancient, but these figures couldn’t be closer. Rubens’s virtuoso brushwork and color are on display.
Peter Paul Rubens, The Rape of the ...
Part man, part goat, this companion of the god of wine relaxes after a night of drinking.
Barberini Faun
Look closely to see bloody wounds and a lifetime of scars on this defeated athlete.
Apollonius, Boxer at Rest (or The Seated ...
One of the leaders of Impressionism turns his back on the movement and attempts to reclaim the classical nude.
Auguste Renoir, The Large Bathers
Sherman creates a series of film stills starring herself—but there is no film.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21
The body’s expressive contortions reflect sculptural tradition, but Schiele used it to express the interior self.
Egon Schiele, Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait)
“Wearing” would be much too strong a word for this woman’s relationship to her shirt.
Amedeo Modigliani, Young Woman in a Shirt
Freud’s nude isn’t the idealized, horizontal beauty of previous centuries, but a forthright, vertical one.
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