Term used to describe the depiction of a naked human figure in works of art. As a subject for art, the nude is essentially Western, emerging in Greece before the 5th century BC. With the exception of India the nude seldom appears in Middle or Far Eastern art and, where it does, as in some Persian miniatures, it is largely incidental. In Indian art religious sculptures have a symbolic importance that transcends realism, and their intended harmony with nature and fertility is often expressed in heavy nude figures that are rhythmic rather than static and that emphasize the roundness of form linked with ideas of abundance. In contrast, the 24 teachers or saints of Jainism are always depicted nude, but in this case the symbolism is of world renunciation. Despite the erotic content of some Japanese prints (shunga) of the ukiyoe ('pictures of the floating world') school, nakedness is rare. Moral taboos caused the nude figure virtually to disappear from Western art from the rise of Christianity in the 3rd century AD until the Renaissance, and few appear in Orthodox Russia, Counter-Reformation Spain and Puritan England until the late 18th century. Attitudes to the subject reflect societies' attitude to the naked body: an object of near veneration in ancient Greece, a vessel of shame in the Christian Middle Ages. It has seldom been uncriticized, even during periods when it was generally acceptable, despite a degree of self-censorship by artists. Yet it has been used to symbolize virtue and truth, and to suggest man's harmony with the universe; it is often associated with the theme of the Golden Age, when man and woman lived together in sexual innocence.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
