Synopsis of Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western Modernity

From the Renaissance to modern times, this extensively illustrated, concise new volume addresses ways that paintings of the nude engage questions of sexuality, gender, class, age and race fundamental to the history of culture and society. The Nude explores some of the principal ways that nude paintings function in the conflicted terrain of culture and society in Europe and America from the 15th to 20th centuries, as set against questions about human sexuality that emerge around differences of class, gender, age and race. Author Richard Leppert relates the visual history of how the naked body intersects with the foundational characteristics of what it is to be human, measured against a range of basic emotion (happiness, desire and delight; fear, anxiety and abjection) and read in the context of changing social and cultural realities. Compellingly written and extensively illustrated, this text is ideal for courses in the history and appreciation of Western art.