The Nude Reclining

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.

 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.

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.

 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 .

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.

 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.

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?

Women As a Sign in Western Art

The Courtesanimage of women

Define Courtesan

Madame de Montespan (Court mistress 0f King Louis XIV of France) 1638-1715

 The Eighteenth Century in France saw the development among

the Aristocracy of a culture of pleasure-Pleasure was taken seriously.

This is seen in the Art style Rococo, which many see as

decadent.

Women are seen as playthings. The courtesan image suggests that women used their
attractiveness to gain power within society.

Define all the words in bold.

Discuss This work using the Cultural Frame

Fragronard The Swing 1768

Eighteenth century Rococo painters, such as Boucher and Fragonard, emphasised the erotic element above all else Bouchers Miss OMurphy seems to be an overt invitation and in much nineteenth century academic art classical references became hardly more than a veneer of respectability over the eroticism of Nymphs at play. Define the words in Bold

Boucher Miss OMurphy 1732

 The High Renaissance nude in the 16th Century was

the beginning of an interest in female form in Painting and Sculpture

Nudes were portrayed as Greek Goddesses, from

ancient legendary mythologies. This gave them an air of dignity.

Titian was the master of this CLASSICAL style of art.

Titian The Venus of Urbino 1538

 men act and women appear. Men look at women.

Women watch themselves being looked at.

In Renaissance images nude women were painted

almost exclusively for the male viewer. Women are often depicted with their bodies turned towards the viewer while their heads are turned away and gazing in a mirror. The woman is aware of being the object of the male gaze.

Compare and contrast Titians work to Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres Grande Odalisque

 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?"

This work was exhibited in Paris in1865. What was the reaction of the Audience? What did the critics say about the work? Explain the intentions of the Artist.

Manet Olmpia 1863

 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.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres Grande Odalisque 1814

 Manet (19th Century Realist) represents a turning point.

His painting which socked the critics shows a prostitute who

looks at us definitely not as a classical goddess

This opened the way to paintings of prostitutes by other

contemporary artists

Find and discuss works by Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec

that depict women in diferent roles