Nude (art) in the context of "Donatello"

Adam and Eve is the title of two famous works in different media by Albrecht Dürer, a German artist of the Northern Renaissance: an engraving made in 1504, and a pair of oil-on-panel paintings completed in 1507. The 1504 engraving depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by several symbolic animals. The engraving transformed how Adam and Eve were popularly depicted in art.

The 1507 painting in the Museo del Prado offered Dürer another opportunity to depict the ideal human figure in a different medium. Painted in Nuremberg soon after his return from Venice, the panels were influenced by Italian art. Dürer's observations on his second trip to Italy provided him with new approaches to portraying the human form. Here, he depicts the figures at human scale—the first full-scale nude subjects in German painting.

A figure painting is a work of fine art in any of the painting media with the primary subject being the human figure, whether clothed or nude. Figure painting may also refer to the activity of creating such a work. The human figure has been one of the constant subjects of art since the first Stone Age cave paintings, and has been reinterpreted in various styles throughout history.

Unlike figure drawings which are usually nudes, figure paintings are often clothed depictions which may be either historically accurate or symbolic. Figure painting is not synonymous with figurative art, which may depict real objects of any kind (including humans and animals).

The historical evolution of the nude in art runs parallel to the history of art in general, except for small particularities derived from the different acceptance of nudity by the various societies and cultures that have succeeded each other in the world over time. The nude is an artistic genre that consists of the representation in various artistic media (painting, sculpture or, more recently, film and photography) of the naked human body. It is considered one of the academic classifications of works of art. Nudity in art has generally reflected the social standards for aesthetics and morality of the era in which the work was made. Many cultures tolerate nudity in art to a greater extent than nudity in real life, with different parameters for what is acceptable: for example, even in a museum where nude works are displayed, nudity of the visitor is generally not acceptable. As a genre, the nude is a complex subject to approach because of its many variants, both formal, aesthetic and iconographic, and some art historians consider it the most important subject in the history of Western art.

Although it is usually associated with eroticism, the nude can have various interpretations and meanings, from mythology to religion, including anatomical study, or as a representation of beauty and aesthetic ideal of perfection, as in Ancient Greece. Its representation has varied according to the social and cultural values of each era and each people, and just as for the Greeks the body was a source of pride, for the Jews—and therefore for Christianity—it was a source of shame, it was the condition of slaves and the miserable.

Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici (27 September 1389 – 1 August 1464) was an Italian banker and politician who became the de facto first ruler of Florence during the Italian Renaissance, establishing the Medici family as its effective leaders for generations. His power derived from his wealth as a banker and intermarriage with other rich and powerful families. He was a patron of arts, learning, and architecture. He spent over 600,000 gold florins (approx. $500 million inflation adjusted) on art and culture, including Donatello's David, the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity.

Despite his influence, his power was not absolute; he was viewed by fellow Florentine politicians as first among equals rather than an autocrat. Florence's legislative councils resisted his proposals throughout his political career, even sending him into exile from 1433 to 1434.

A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures, using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, anatomically correct renderings to loose and expressive sketches. A life drawing is a drawing of the human figure, traditionally nude, from observation of a live model. Creating life drawings, or life studies, in a life class, has been a large element in the traditional training of artists in the Western world since the Renaissance.

A figure drawing may be a composed work of art or a figure study done in preparation for a more finished work, such as a painting. Figure drawing is arguably the most difficult subject an artist commonly encounters, and entire courses are dedicated to the subject. The human figure is one of the most enduring themes in the visual arts, and the human figure can be the basis of portraiture, illustration, sculpture, medical illustration, and other fields.

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (UK: /ˈkʊərbeɪ/ KOOR-bay; US: /kʊərˈbeɪ/ koor-BAY; French: [ɡystav kuʁbɛ]; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.

Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) is a 1910 Cubist painting by Pablo Picasso. The artwork was one of Picasso’s early Analytic Cubist creations, through which he aimed to reduce organic forms to geometric shapes. It shows the model Fanny Tellier in the nude, with her hands on a mandolin. Tellier volunteered to model for Picasso but, according to the latter, eventually refused to continue sitting for him after the painting took longer to complete than she had expected. Picasso accordingly left the portrait unfinished, though later suggested that he could have done nothing further to improve it.

Picasso painted Girl with a Mandolin late in the spring of 1910, shortly before leaving Paris for the Catalan town of Cadaqués. It was a response to Woman with a Mandolin, a more abstract treatment of the same theme by his friend Georges Braque, and followed two other works by Picasso under the same title. It has been analysed as a partial move away from naturalism, though comparatively legible and close to the visible form by contrast with later Cubist works, and as an important step in Picasso's movement towards focusing on the study of geometric planes. It has also been interpreted both as a de-eroticised nude and as containing autoerotic implications. The art historian T. J. Clark called it "the most ingenious of Picasso's portraits".

An art model is a person who poses, often nude, for visual artists as part of the creative process, providing a reference for the human body in a work of art. The importance of the human figure in Western art begins with the Ancient Greeks, which was rediscovered in the Renaissance, art modelling then becoming an occupation. With few exceptions, models remained anonymous until the 19th century.

Modern nude models have most often been employees of art schools, and paid by the hour to pose. As an occupation, modeling requires the often strenuous 'physical work' of holding poses for the required length of time, the 'aesthetic work' of performing a variety of interesting poses, and the 'emotional work' of maintaining a socially ambiguous role. While the role of nude models is well-established as a necessary part of artistic practice, public nudity remains transgressive, and models may be vulnerable to stigmatization or exploitation.