page_title: Depictions of nudity
section_title: Portraits and nudes
hierarchical_section_title: Depictions of nudity / Nudity in art / Portraits and nudes
context_page_description: Depictions of nudity include visual representations of nudity throughout history, in disciplines including the arts and sciences. Nudity is restricted in most societies, but some depictions of nudity may serve a recognized social function. Clothing also serves as a significant part of interpersonal communication, and a lack of clothing in public is expected to have a social context. In Western societies, the three contexts that are easily recognized by a majority of individuals are art, pornography, and information or science. Any image not easily fitting into one of these categories may be misinterpreted, leading to disputes.
context_section_description: Portraits and nudes without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning were a fairly common genre of art during all centuries. Some regard Goya's La Maja desnuda of around 1800, which provoked outrage in Spanish society over the model painted with and without her clothes (desnuda means nude), as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art", but paintings of nude females were not uncommon, especially paintings of mistresses and lover of kings, dukes and other aristocrats and mistresses and wives of the artists. La Maja desnuda was different in only one way, it was exhibited on a public art exhibition.
  A 1751 portrait of Marie-Louise O'Murphy, mistress to Louis XV of France, by François Boucher depicts the model lying naked on her bed, playfully stretched out with her legs apart.
  The painting Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs (Gabrielle d'Estrées and one of her sisters), by an unknown artist circa 1594, is of Gabrielle d'Estrées, mistress of King Henry IV of France, sitting up nude in a bath, holding what is presumed to be Henry's coronation ring, while her sister, also nude, sits beside her and pinches her right nipple. Henry gave Gabrielle the ring as a token of his love shortly before she died. The painting is a symbolic announcement anticipating the birth of Gabrielle's first child with Henry, César de Bourbon.
  Andrea Doria (1466–1560) was an Italian condottiero and admiral from Genoa. He was famous as a naval commander. For several years he scoured the Mediterranean in command of the Genoese fleet, waging war on the Turks and the Barbary pirates. Doria entered the service of King Francis I of France, who made him captain-general. On the expiration of Doria's contract he entered the service of Emperor Charles V (1528). As imperial admiral he commanded several expeditions against the Ottoman Empire.
   He was generally successful and always active, although over seventy and eighty years old. Judged by the standards of his day, Doria was an outstanding leader. He chose to be depicted nude as Poseidon, the "God of the Sea." Poseidon's main domain is the ocean, and Doria was a successful admiral. The god is usually depicted as an older male with curly hair and beard.
  Although naked, Andrea Doria is not fragile or frail. He is depicted as a powerful virile man, showing masculine spirit, strength, vigor, and power.
  Bronzino's so-called "allegorical portraits", such as this Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria are less typical but possibly even more fascinating due to the peculiarity of placing a publicly recognized personality in the nude as a mythical figure.
  Helena Fourment in furs, a painting by the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, shows the artist's second wife, Helena Fourment. Rubens frequently used his young wife as a model: she is also the subject of Helena Fourment, Helena Fourment in a wedding dress (1630), Helena Fourment with his son Fransem (1635) Helena Fourment with children (1636-1637), Portrait of Helena Fourment with carriage in the background (1639) and the full-figure painting of Helena in fur (1638) getting out of the bath. Helene has been featured in a pose similar to the Venus pudica (modest Venus), one of the most popular presentations of the goddess in antiquity. The young woman covers herself with a fur, but the garment leaves her breasts visible, and she looks in a teasing way at the viewer. The picture remained in Rubens' possession and had a particular importance for him. He left it to his wife in his will.
  Even Manet created a scandal when he exhibited Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia, in which a model is depicted naked.
  The term "Orientalism" is widely used in art to refer to the works of the many Western 19th-century artists who specialized in "Oriental" subjects, often drawing on their travels to Western Asia. Artists as well as scholars were described as "Orientalists" in the 19th century. The Société des Peintres Orientalistes ("Society of Orientalist Painters") was founded in 1893, with Jean-Léon Gérôme as honorary president; the word was less often us
caption: Andrea Doria as the god Poseidon, by Agnolo Bronzino
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