“It is true, Rem­brandt did not study the nude accord­ing to the beau­ti­ful cir­cum­stances […]. His Bath­se­bas are Dutch wash­er­women. […] His chaste Susans are cat­tle maidens […]”

Eduard Koll­hoff, Rem­brandts Leben und Werk nach neuen Acten­stück­en…, Leipzig 1854

Did Rem­brandt even cel­e­brate the ugli­ness of the body? Or did the view­ers of the 19^th cen­tu­ry only remain hid­den, what is con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece to us today? From Bot­ti­cel­li’s fig­ures fol­low­ing the Ital­ian Renais­sance’s doc­trine of pro­por­tion to Cranach’s strange­ly elon­gat­ed women to the lush Baroque nudes of a Rubens, we view a whole panora­ma of body images of past cen­turies. Through the ​“act of cre­ation,” art con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vents the human being. Fas­ci­nat­ing are the so dif­fer­ent con­texts with­in which the unclothed human body is depict­ed: Be it sto­ries from ancient mythol­o­gy, Chris­t­ian saint­ly leg­ends or bib­li­cal his­to­ries — they all legit­imized the nude.