TIZIANO VECELLIO ( TITIAN )

Concert Champetre Titian

Concert Champetre - The incongruous atmosphere of this work and its exact meaning always remained a mystery. There have been a number of ingenious suggestions of interpretations over the years including that the two nude women may be figments in the minds of the men’s imaginations. The one I find most likely is that is simply a sort of erotic daydream of those far off days, one of the countless good excuses for painting the nude without being persecuted by the church for doing so, by shrouding the subject in mystery and then blinding the church with science. This painting was also the inspiration for Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.

Bacchanal - This amazing, frenetic painting is one of three mythologies that Titian painted for Alfonso d’Este; it is one of Titian’s most erotically charged works, showing just how far an artist could go under the guise of painting mythological works. The nude in the foreground is one of the most constantly copied of Titian’s works, including by Rubens a hundred years later. Although it might be unbelievable to us, who are used to seeing magazines showing us girls with their legs wide open, at the time when this painting was owned by Cardinal Aldobrandini, although it shows nothing, not even the slightest hint of pubic hair - the area of the girl’s sex was modestly covered with a fig-leaf, now thank heavens removed.

Bacchanal Titian

Danae Titian

Danae - This one was even admired by Michelangelo for its colouring and its “lively manner,” although his one reservation was its “lack of drawing!” Titian had a new mistress at the time of these works who was pobably a great inspiration for them, the reason Titian was able to get away with so much overt eroticism was that in 1555 Philip of Spain came to the throne and was a well known lover of erotica. Since Danae is waiting impatiently for the shower of gold to penetrate her (as it was Zeus in disguise!) the old lady shown to be trying to catch as much of it as possible in her apron on its way to its destination says much for Titian’s sense of humour.

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Io Correggio

ANTONIA ALLEGRI CORREGGIO (1490-1534) Io - Artists learnt that the best way they could get away with painting the nude to their heart’s content, even in the most erotic and suggestive poses, was simply by titling their works with the most “learned” mythological titles. Few people who ever gaze upon the works delighting in their erotic qualities would have even the slightest clue (or interest) as to the “serious” supposed meaning of the work - and of course, it doesn’t matter! What does matter is the quality of craftsmanship and sheer beauty of the paintings, which express the adoration with which many artists regard Woman, expressing their admiration of her as well as their desire for her. That’s an attitude I can thoroughly understand and approve of, and would hope is mirrored in my own work. In Io,Jupiter is seen as a cloud! But in whatever form he appears, he is certainly causing nothing but pleasure. Just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, note the stag in the bottom right hand corner, slaking his thirst. In Victorian times, Correggio’s frankly erotic works were considered particularly shocking and looked down upon of course. But even before that, Hogarth (1697-1764) painted it in the background as a symbol of decadence in his Morning Levee, one of the works from the great satirical series he painted titled Marriage a la Mode.

Correggio created, amongst his many great works, one of the two or three most erotic paintings I know, which I have always loved and will certainly, at some point, create my own version of, as the subject of Leda has always fascinated (and amused) me. When one looks at this very brilliant and subtle painting, although one actually sees nothing (graphic) one realizes by her pose, manner and expression, that she is actually being penetrated at the moment of being captured in paint. Few people had the nerve to try to express such a thing; even fewer could do it so brilliantly that they could get away with it, and show it to their grandmother without causing her the slighted vexation. Correggio does all that with his Leda and the Swan, painted in 1532. As greatly miraculous as these works themselves are, is the fact that they survived the hypocritical censors' wrath and actually came down to us today, finally to be appreciated and enjoyed to the degree they merit.

Leda and the Swan (Detail) Correggio

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AGNOLO BRONZINO

Because artists had to use mythology to pull the wool over the church’s beady, prickly eye, often the actual meaning of a painting was so obscure that the artist can only be considered extremely lucky to have survived suspicion. A particular work of this nature, and one of my favourite paintings of all time that has a considerable influence on me to this day, is Bronzino’s Allegory of Venus and Cupid. Even now, “experts” still involve themselves in finding explanations that might solve the mysterious meanings of the work.

Allegory of Venus and Cupid Bronzino

It might just be possible, however, that the brilliant composition and colouring were simply a straightforward indulgence by the (great) artist to experiment, to have fun painting a glorious nude, especially from the drawing point of view, and even make a slight foray into Surrealism. By making the colours somewhat unnatural, Bronzino very cleverly removes the nudity from possible offence by implying that it serves only as a symbol of whatever obscure meanings he might have dreamed up at the time to “excuse” such indulgence. But in doing so, he got away with painting a work which is in fact more graphically erotic than Titian or Correggio’s actually more convincing rendering of tactile flesh. The painting is supposed to represent Venus (nude) being kissed by Cupid (nude) with Pleasure and Play on one side, Fraud, Jealousy and the Passions on the other. A marvellous example of early Erotic Art, in which Bronzino delights his viewers by painting what they all supposedly condemn, and so whilst admiring it they can tut tut and roll their eyes at the same time as loving it. That was no doubt the attitude of his patron Cosimo di Medici, and then all the viewers of the work later, when it landed in the French court of Francois Premier.

But what is so appealing about this painting, to me at least, apart from its sheer visual impact of beauty, is that by taking the colouring of the flesh almost to the point of surrealism, Bronzino managed to make his viewers comfortable with it, enough for it to have survived to delight and influence me to this day, as well as to please countless others who see it. By removing it all from a sense of reality, Bronzino got away with depicting the mingling of tongues, the squeezing of a nipple, the lovingly depicted buttocks of Cupid and even the delicate suggestion that Venus might actually have pubic hair, all things unheard of at that time. And so you see, I regard this painting as a sort of intellectual con trick, but the most beautiful one I ever saw.

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PETER PAUL RUBENS

The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus Rubens

The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus - If I didn’t know Rubens as well as I do, I would be really suspicious of that title. But I do know him that well, and so realize there isn’t any pun - or even fun - intended. Rape became a very popular subject by the 17th century and for the artist was an opportunity to heighten eroticism through violence - although it would have exactly the opposite effect on me, who finds absolutely nothing erotic in violence at all. Happily, when such works were by a Master as great as Rubens, they transcended either ridiculous or pretentious (or simply pathetic) titles anyway, and became simply beautiful examples of the nude in frenetic movement. If one can see around those seemingly silly concepts, understand the reason for them and the obligations the artists were under, and then look at the works objectively as line and colour on canvas or panel, rarely could the female nude have been painted more beautifully than in this masterpiece of design.

Note the reflection of red cloth on the buttocks of the upper girl for example; this is a favourite “trick” of Rubens that I often use myself and am always amazed to note how few other artists do so, when it adds such a stunning quality of light, warmth and roundness. How perfectly drawn is the leg that hangs so heavily down, showing that she has already given up the battle, and how light and subtle the glaze that shadows that leg from half way up. Her breasts too are beautifully and convincingly painted, in a pose that anyone other than Rubens would have made to look the impossible pose that it is. Rubens’ genius makes us accept it without question. The girl on the ground is again in a pose virtually impossible to depict comfortably, but Rubens pulls it off perfectly, and at the same time manages to show us convincingly her well rounded buttocks and even allows the quiet but present contact of toes to take place between her and her aggressor. And that’s just talking about the two nudes in the work, as the nude is the subject of this article, we won’t even mention the brilliant quality of painting in the men, the horses, the drapery or even the landscape. Such is the greatest of great Art.

At least as important as drawing and the composition of a work is the achieving of the miracle of painting light on flesh, and expressing with brushes how that light causes the flesh to appear alive. The reason that Rubens had perhaps a more profound influence than any other artist on so many painters that came after him for centuries, was that no one ever achieved this particular aspect of painting the nude more greatly than he. As greatly, perhaps, but in different ways. When it comes to light on living flesh, no one achieved that wonderful rippling, breathing, living effect more believably than Peter Paul Rubens.

A further comment on the genius of Rubens: The dynamics of the male nude are completely different from those of the female. He is invariably shown as stronger and even more active. Most female nudes are shown in repose, lying or standing or whichever pose the artist feels shows her off to best physical advantage. The Male Nude, however, is painted to show his strength; he is portrayed more often showing off his stamina, his muscles rather than his sheer physical beauty of form. In sculpture, the great artists Michelangelo and Canova, and even Rodin, attempted, I believe, to show off the beauty of Man in much the same way as later artists would do with Woman, on canvas. He is seen “posing,” and with little purpose greater than simply to show off his (masculine) beauty. Michelangelo’s David is a prime example of that.

One way of separating the sexes however, or the expression of their essences, which is what a painter most often tries to achieve, is seen most clearly in the work of Rubens. While his women are glisteningly white and soft, his men are not only heavily muscled but much darker, with deeply tanned skins, implying of course that women are expected to lie around seductively, with their skin protected from the sun by always being indoors - preferably in the boudoir, awaiting their heroes to return to them from the hunt or the battle, while indeed, the men are out there under the merciless sun, hunting and making war. This might sound very primitive and naive, but it served Art as an idea - and a desirable one at that - for some centuries, even up to the nineteenth century Orientalists. For them the idea of the great pasha and the completely subjugated woman was nothing less than an ideal. The quality of painting achieved whilst expressing this idea was, however, often superb, as in the case of Jean Leon Gerome for example. At the same time, the Pre-Raphaelites were working to show Woman less as a temptress than an Angel, the inspiration behind any worthwhile aspiration. And while she was usually clothed - quite angelically, in floating diaphanous robes - she was sometimes allowed to come out naked, and be beautifully portrayed nude, with fine examples of the art of painting, particularly by Edward Coley Burne-Jones. 1833-1898

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REMBRANDT HARMENSZOON VAN RIJN (1606-1669) Bathsheba - So much has been written in glowing terms about this painting that you might be surprised to learn that it is one of the few Rembrandts that I don’t actually like. I even believe that all that emotional pseudo humanitarian claptrap about the human condition reflected in her eyebrows etc is simply a compensation for an ugliness and even clumsiness experts, connoisseurs and critics have been surprised to find in a Master as recognizably great as Rembrandt. Instead of just accepting that he was after all, human and so occasionally would have produced a bad egg in a box of a dozen otherwise perfect ones and letting it go, they had to “compensate” with all those flowery - meaningless - words. I love the subject, I like the composition, I love the actual way it’s painted, by probably the greatest actual painter in history, which I consider Rembrandt to have been. However, there are so many things I don’t like about it that after discovering the story of David and Bathsheba in a book that was “dropped in my lap” as it were, I was so inspired by it, as well as frustrated by all the above mentioned aspects of Rembrandt’s version of it, that I created my own Bathsheba using Rembrandt’s essential composition, but reversed, as the basis for my own.

Bathsheba Rembrandt Bathsheba Christian

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Victory of Amor Caravaggio

MICHELANGELO CARAVAGGIO DA MERISI (1571-1610) Victory of Amor - Caravaggio was always considered the founder of Mannerism and its dramatically lit basically classical concepts. However, he portrayed man less as the hunter than the desirable sexual object, a decided turnaround from most other (male) nudes in art. Being gay, Caravaggio loved nothing more than to paint naked young boys. Happily for him, his first great patron, Cardinal del Monte, felt the same way, he too was somewhat partial to the subject; naked or semi-naked young boys had an immense appeal to him. These paintings, like so many female equivalents for the straighter amongst the ecclesiastic and aristocratic hierarchy, were the pin-ups of their day, masquerading of course as religious or mythological works. But none of that takes away from the supreme quality of craftsmanship in these works, and the delight in its appreciation. Back to Top ↑

DIEGO VELASQUEZ

The Rokeby Venus - This picture, painted in 1650, like the later one by Velasquez’s compatriot Goya, was a one-off for Velasquez, stepping out of his usual role as portrait painter and mythological history artist for this one singular nude and risking the wrath of the Inquisition which, if any comparisons can be made of such grossness, was reputed to be more cruel in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. On his second trip to Italy Velasquez was inspired enough by the more liberal and hedonistic atmosphere prevailing there to create this wonderful work. He hardly even bothered to give any classical disguise to it. Its beauty lies in its sheer simplicity, lack of classical pretension and finally, marvellous handling of paint, of which Velasquez was one of the three greatest masters of all time.

The title of the painting dates from the 19th century, when it was owned by the Morritt family of Rokeby Hall in Yorkshire. A great statement was made concerning this singular work, that shows the attitude of those times and the fact that we have, in some ways at least, made a modicum of progress:

“The painting was hung high over the chimney-piece so that by raising the said backside to a considerable height the ladies may avert their downcast eyes without difficulty, and the connoisseurs steal a glance without drawing the said posterior into the company.”

The Rokeby Venus Velasquez

Such a subject would have met with the most extreme disapproval of the Inquisition at that time, but Velasquez’ closeness to Philip IV, the King of Spain, protected him. It was in various collections in Spain and Italy until finally being brought to England where it was acquired by the Morritt family for Rokeby Hall. It was put up for sale in 1905 and purchased by the then two year old National Art Collections Fund, through a public subscription which raised the necessary £45,000; it has been hung in the National gallery ever since, mostly without incident, although it was slashed with an axe by the over-zealous suffragette, Mary Richardson, in 1914 confusing Art with politics. Fortunately she caused no more damage to the work than could be relatively easily restored and covered up forever by the Gallery’s marvellous team of restorers.

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Backview Lying Nude Christian

FRANCOIS BOUCHER

As we move from the Baroque to Romanticism we see far more blatant sexuality. I have always considered Francois Boucher to be the painter of some of the sexiest works in history, before the present time when censorship is no longer feared and the artist no longer trembles before the critic or the church, who has kept him bridled for centuries. Boucher was almost unrivalled when it came to creating “pinups.” His Rest of Diana, painted in 1742, is as beautiful and sexy a rendering of a girl’s body as might be found, the translucence of her skin heightened by the ingeniously placed string of pearls.

Mademoiselle Murphy Boucher

For me however, one of the two or three most erotic paintings ever created is Mademoiselle Murphy. Only fourteen years old at the time of being painted, the young future mistress of the king seems to be present only as an invitation, and an advertisement for all physically (and mentally!) desirable things about Woman. It is truly a supreme piece of painting, both technically and psychologically. It is, for me, his ultimate masterpiece and one of the two or three sexiest paintings ever created; I feel she is at least as edible a morsel or piece of fruit as any I ever painted.

Boucher’s ideal in a nude woman, as recorded by a pupil of his, was:

“We must not think of a woman’s body as a covering for bones; it should not be fat though it should be firm and slender without thereby appearing to be thin.”

These criteria were apparently well met by Louison Murphy, one of the rare nudes not to have remained anonymous. Louison was of Irish descent, the daughter of an itinerant soldier. She was brought up in poverty, but she managed to make her way to Paris and start modeling, so that by the age of fourteen she was painted as we see here by no less than Boucher, then at the height of his fame as court painter. A year later she excited Casanova to write:

“White like a lily she has all the beauty that both Nature and the painter’s art could possibly bestow on anyone.”

Probably through Boucher, a year after that, by the time our heroine was sixteen she met Louis XV and quickly became one of his mistresses. She celebrated a period of wealth and even power that she was not used to, but sadly for her the heady lifestyle led to her downfall when she attempted to outsmart and topple the sophisticated favourite, Madame de Pompadour. She died in relative poverty and obscurity, but happily, through this masterpiece, she will go on living into eternity.

In 1767, when the painting was exhibited at the Salon of that year (the Paris equivalent of London’s Royal Academy) it was scathingly referred to by Diderot, the critic of that time, as “an example of an indecent painting that was made acceptable by the attractiveness of its subject.” His moral attitude, hypocritical as always, was belied by his further description of this work. “A completely naked woman stretched out on pillows, legs astride, offering the most voluptuous head, the most beautiful back, the finest buttocks...” Come, come Diderot.......

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JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD (1732-1806) Bathers - Painted in 1765, this little painting was hugely important in the scheme of things. Neither a depiction of a contemporary scene nor with any pretended mythological associations implied in the title, Bathers was a new departure in Art, for me very much in the right direction. This small painting justified much of what was to come after it in the 19th and even the 20th Centuries. After being in a private collection for almost a hundred years - along with Rembrandt’s Bathsheba - it was presented to the Louvre in 1869. Publicly exhibited for the first time, its remarkable freedom of technique might well have served as an inspiration to the art of the Impressionists. It certainly did so for Renoir’s Grandes Baigneuses of 1887.

Bathers Fragonard Back to Top ↑

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

Intervention of the Sabine Women David

Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1797 - David took the unusual step of exhibiting this huge, magnificent painting in the National Palace of the Sciences and the Arts for which showing he defensively wrote a pamphlet to explain the nudity of its main protagonists. Amazingly enough, in that age - and that city, Paris! - of decadence and perversions that could at the very least be compared with the present in Britain, the work caused a scandal and was greatly criticized. In the pamphlet, David wrote that he wanted to...

“...represent the customs of antiquity with such an exactitude that the Greeks and Romans, had they seen the work, would not have found me a stranger to their customs.”

His reasoning was later questioned by Stendhal, the so-called expert of this period, who wrote back:

“And what do we care about classical bas reliefs? The Greeks liked the naked body but we, for our part, never see it, indeed I should say that it disgusts us!”

Can you believe that anyone ever wrote that? The sheer ridiculousness of the situation didn’t stop there; a group of David’s fans who called themselves the Primatifs took to applying David’s beliefs to every day life, dressing up in antique costumes and even skinny-dipping in the Seine!

I find it difficult to remain sympathetic to David however, in spite of his having painted a few truly marvellous paintings and being the teacher of Ingres, who has been one of the most dominant influences on my life, especially in latter years. But what sticks in my mind and makes me feel uncomfortable whenever I think of David, is that his was one of the signatures that sent Marie-Antoinette to her hideous death at the guillotine. He even sketched her approaching that death from his window which she had to pass on her horrendous way to the guillotine; a cold and clinical sketch it is indeed. I have an old and unshakable faith that says that Art should be above politics, except perhaps to ridicule them from time to time. “It is not politics that is going to save the world, it is Art.” Rukmini Devi Arundale’s response on being offered the premiership of India in 1977.

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JEAN-AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE INGRES

Ingres was a strange artist; he possessed a natural genius for the craft side of his art and yet sometimes agonized - to the point of tears! - over many of his works, often finding himself dissatisfied with them in some way on their completion. It is perhaps through Ingres that the phrase “An artist is never satisfied with his work,” was born, a phrase I heard as often as “Yes, but you can’t earn a living doing that, (painting) can you?” when I was growing up in 50’s London. La Source for example, is one of Ingres’ most popular and widely reproduced works, and yet remained unfinished in his studio for thirty years before he could bring himself to finish it, with the aid of assistants, who added the urn and completed the background.

La Source Ingres

As an artist, Ingres looked at the female body in a much less sensual manner than some of the artists I have mentioned thus far. He was inspired more than anything else by its incomparably beautiful and expressive form, and the potential to express that in classical proportions. Interestingly enough, it was therefore in spite of himself that he created some of the most beautiful nudes in the world, almost surrealistic though, rather than classical. However, it’s true that instead of feeling, as you might with Rubens’ girls, that you could reach out and pluck the fruit out of the painting and yes, eat it, in the case of Ingres you are definitely not likely to feel that, but more likely that you would rather just sit and gaze upon the miracle of that form. Ingres is probably the one artist above all others to have the sort of influence on my work where I actually occasionally use one or two of his figures as the starting point for some of my own compositions. A truly great example of form over eroticism, the one that crops up the most and anyway is one of my favourite nudes of all time, is his Angelique. Inges obviously loved this image particularly as he painted several almost identical versions of it.

In 1819, Ingres made a note in his diary - well actually somewhat more than a note, he copied out part of a letter which had been written in 1717 but published in 1805, by the wife of the British Ambassador to Constantinople. In it, she described the famous women’s baths of that city, in which up to two hundred women paraded naked, chatting together, (smoking hashish no doubt, in joints and hookahs, although that wasn’t mentioned.) Many of these women, the letter continued, were very pale-skinned and beautiful. This image of oriental sensuality and erotic indolence remained with Ingres, almost as an obsession, all his life. Towards the end of that (very long) life, he finally managed to express it in his “Bain Turque,” (“Turkish Bath.”) The painting was eventually bought by Joseph Bonaparte, but his wife was so shocked by the number of nudes present in her house that the prince was obliged to exchange it for another of Ingres’ works. Ingres then reduced the painting to its present circular format, proudly adding his inscription that he had completed it at the age of eighty three. In 1865 it was finally bought by Khalil Bey, the notorious Erotic Art loving former Turkish Ambassador to St. Petersburg, who was later to become the all-important patron of Courbet, and own the famous The Sleepers, and the Origin du Monde. by that singular artist, about whom I have already written in full.

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EDOUARD MANET

Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe 1863 - Originally titled Le Bain, (The Swim) according to a friend of Manet at the time it was inspired by a Sunday outing to Argenteuil. Anton Proust, the friend, wrote:

“Some women were bathing nearby. Manet had his eyes fixed on the flesh of those coming out of the water. 'It appears,' said Manet, 'that I must do a nude. Very well, I shall do one. When we were at art school, I copied Giorgione’s Concert Champetre. It’s black that painting; the priming is showing through. I want to do it over again, but in terms of transparent light, and with people like these!'"

Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe Manet

He eventually used as models his brother Gustave and his friend who would become his brother-in-law, Ferdinand Leenhoff. Victoria Mercent was the model for the female nude in the centre of the composition, as indeed she was for Manet’s “Olympia” which followed two years later. Although inspired by the Giorgione, (and some glimpses of bare flesh at Argenteuil!) Manet famously based his composition of “Dejeuner” on Raphael’s (now lost) “Judgement of Paris.”

I consider these two paintings to be the bridge between all that was great in figurative art based on the traditions that inspired the Renaissance, and so-called modern art. Around the time of Manet’s two great works there were a few other marvellous artists working as well, even creating some notable and lovely nudes, like Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir who painted “The Bather and the Griffin” in 1870. Even the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Burne-Jones, created some great and beautiful nudes.

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ADOLPHE-WILLIAM BOUGUEREAU

Birth of Venus Bouguereau

Everything about Bouguereau was anathema to the Impressionists, who were working at the same time - and in the same city! - as he was. He was the quintessential Academician, both in painting style and lifestyle. But the thing was about Bouguereau, as indeed it was by his Italian/British counterpart Alma-Tadema working in England, that his phenomenal technical abilities, which inevitably produced large numbers of sterile chocolate box images, occasionally transcended their own possibilities and entered the realm of great Art. When this happens - and there are several examples of it throughout Art History - it is always marvellous; it is a very good artist – i.e. not a genius on the level of say Michelangelo, or Rubens - suddenly being touched by that genius, almost in spite of himself. In at least one of those examples of when that happened to Bouguereau is his Birth of Venus, and since that was the subject we started this article with, that of Botticelli, I thought it appropriate to finish off with the same marvellous subject. Bouguereau painted several very fine nudes and semi-nudes, but this is one of his great ones.

As the 20th Century approached, the combination of rebellion against the last shackles of censorship, and revenge on the church for five hundred years of tyrannical censorship and control, led to a swing in the opposite direction which I believe, like the French Revolution and virtually any such swing, quickly got out of control, to become as bad if not worse than the very thing that was being rebelled against. It has given us horrors like Cezanne’s Bathers, Renoir’s later works like his Bathers of 1918, and finally Picasso’s Damned Wazelles of Avignon, an insult to the female form (and public intelligence) if there ever was one. Assisted by two horrendous world wars that left permanent albeit invisible scars on humanity, art arrived at the point it is at today, where literally anything goes, scandal is almost mandatory and the word “Beauty” never even enters into discussion, unless it is to condemn such principles as old-fashioned and redundant. The situation as I see it, let’s say from more or less 1900, at which point I shall leave my article, was actually well described by my old enemy Salvador Dali, who said:

“Today the love of the defective is such that genius is only recognized in defects, and especially in ugliness. The moment a Venus resembles a toad, the contemporary pseudo-aesthetes exclaim, “It’s powerful, it’s human!” Certain it is that Raphaelesque perfections would pass totally unperceived before their eyes.”

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Anthony Christian • Anthony Christian's Nudes

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