The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 3 March -2 June 2019

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With a title like this, Renaissance Nude is bound to attract more than the usual crowd. But this new exhibition at the Royal Academy also offers serious insights into one of art’s great subject matters.

Even in its inception in 15th century Italy, the nude was a controversial object for painting. One of its pioneers, Michelangelo, caused a stir with his naked biblical heroes in the Sistine Chapel. But the nude sat at the intersection of so many artistic themes that it was impossible for the squeamish authorities to slow its development. From Adam and Eve to the crucified Christ, and the torture of saints to human anatomy, the religious and scientific blend of the Renaissance made the naked body into an object of fascination. Big names like Leonardo Da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, as well as minor artists, were all drawn to it.

The all-encompassing name “Renaissance Nude” is a fair one for this exhibition. An enormous range of nudes are on display, with iconic paintings alongside bronze works, books, and engravings. Sure enough, it’s bronze works which confront you when you walk in, such as Donatello’s Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1445-50), and engravings such as Martin Schongauer’s Baptism of Christ (mid-1470s).

For biblical figures, nakedness was often a condition of their suffering. Think saints stripped of their clothes before being tortured to death, or a stark Jesus hung in humiliation on the cross. In a work from Hans Leu’s workshop, The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508-9), we find Roman soldiers without their usual fierceness, naked and impaled on thorns for converting to Christianity. But even in these dark moments, “nudists” manage to work in ideals of naked beauty, the idealised human form. Saint Sebastian looks positively regal in Conegliano’s painting (1500-2). The arrow fired into his leg isn’t even bleeding.

Unsurprisingly, Venus gets the nude treatment again and again in this exhibition. Inspired by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (mid-1480s), numerous painters on show here sought to portray the Roman goddess of beauty in all her skinly glory. Among them was Titian in Venus Rising from the Sea (1520). Titian alone makes The Renaissance Nude unmissable, as it’s hard to overestimate his importance for Western art. But male nudity is made beautiful as well, above all in Bronzino’s Saint Sebastian (1533), the exhibition’s ginger poster child.

You might find it jarring after such displays of beauty, but evil is just as important a topic for Renaissance nudes. Time and again here you’ll spot Bathsheba in her birthday suit, as she seduces King David: a stern lesson in the perils of adultery. The sinners cast into Hell in Bouts’s Fall of the Damned (1468-69) are naked as they’re prodded by demons, while their lucky counterparts in Heaven get loincloths (Way to Paradise, 1468-69). Perugino’s Combat between Love and Chastity (1503-5) takes the Renaissance technique of “perspective” and paints a giant theatre for the soul. Naked figures who represent burning love and sexual self-control fighting it out in the landscape without their clothes. Emotion is taken out of the picture altogether in the studies of body proportions, made by Da Vinci and others. Inspired by the resurgence of science and mathematics in the Renaissance, these latter artists set about trying to draw the ideal human body, their sketches marked with diagrams and remarkably detailed commentaries.

But the contradictory attitudes to nudity – sin and salvation, purity and indignity, emotion and science – are best summed up in Dürer’s Adam and Eve (1504). As everyone knows, Adam and Eve were happy to be naked in the Garden of Eden until they ate the apple. After that, they felt ashamed and covered themselves up. The furore over the Sistine Chapel showed that nakedness remained a taboo in the Renaissance, even though humans were naked before the Fall. Dürer solves the problem by drawing Adam and Eve in nude innocence, but stood behind plants, conveniently covering up their intimate parts.

Maybe you’ll come to Renaissance Nudes for the wrong reasons. But that doesn’t matter, if you’re getting an education in art history. In fact, it’s our much more relaxed approach to nudity that draws you to The Renaissance Nude. We’re not used to seeing nakedness treated so seriously, with results which are beautiful rather than sexy. Not a bad way to spend an hour.

The Royal Academy

Burlington House, Piccadilly, Mayfair, Londres W1J 0BD

The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 3 March -2 June 2019
The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 3 March -2 June 2019
The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 3 March -2 June 2019
The Renaissance Nude, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 3 March -2 June 2019

Opening Hours

Monday:
10:00 - 18:00
Tuesday:
10:00 - 18:00
Wednesday:
10:00 - 18:00
Thursday:
10:00 - 18:00
Friday:
10:00 - 22:00
Saturday:
10:00 - 18:00
Sunday:
10:00 - 18:00