The Female Figure

The female body as symbol of classical beauty & the ultimate art form

                     "The nakedness of woman is the work of God"                      
                                                                                                                  -William Blake

Influences of The Renaissance

Primavera, 1482
Tempera on panel
203 cm × 314 cm

The shift from the Medieval art during the Middle Ages where the Church was the main patron of art, to the Renaissance brought about much change where now wealthy patrons including noblemen, merchants and bankers began to commission works that escaped the rigidity of religious art.

As seen through the work of famous Renaissance artist’s including Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, the beginning of ‘modern’ science arose curiosity in the human figure and the rediscovery of beauty through the form of the human body. A sense of Humanism can be felt through the revival of the Classical Greek and Roman art through the Renaissance movement, which also laid down a new foundations for modern Western values and society with new ways of thinking and learning emerging.

Renaissance artists payed great attention into creating a sense of realism in their works emphasizing on linear perspectives, accurate proportions and three-dimensional modelling accomplished through their mastered techniques in painting with color and tone in order to create form.

The Birth of Venus, 1486
Tempera on canvas
172.5 cm × 278.5 cm

COMMENTARIES

‘The Nude remains a landmark (albeit an increasingly controversial one) in the description of the female body as art form. Indeed, for Clark the female nude represents the triumph of art: the ultimate transformation of matter into form. In these terms the image of the female nude is a pure form, one that, rather than provoking action, encourages contemplation, even reverence. To make his point Clark differentiates between the celestial and the earthly Venus. The former represents a perfection of the female form, so abstracted from sexual pleasure that it can sanction the male gaze and turns the female body into a work of art. The earthly Venus, by contrast, is warmly sensual, its wanton form always on the brink of immodesty. As such it is taken to be a less deserving object. Clark's statement is a classic example of the ways in which art criticism has sought to regulate the female form’.

Kenneth Clark's 1956

 ‘Clarke images the form as potential perfection’.

Robert W. Jones