Why did the Ancient Greeks make so many statues of naked, muscular men? Kunstspot had a mini-lecture by art historian Jan de Jong on the male nude in ancient and early modern times. ‘The human body is incredibly difficult to paint or sculpt, so depicting a nude body allowed them to show how good they were.’
‘It started with the Ancient Greeks, in the fifth century BC,’ says Jan de Jong. Think of the marble-carved statues of a trained discus thrower or the god Apollo. ‘These were not realistic male bodies, but ideal images. One tried to depict man not as he is, but as he should be in the ideal world.’
As early as Roman times, the nude in art experienced a decline, partly because new themes such as historical battles made their appearance. ‘That's where uniforms and armour come in.’ What also makes a difference is that the Romans had an emperor. ‘They made statues of him that were put up all over the country. So, how do you know if someone is the emperor? By his clothes. So clothes became important for recognising people.’
"Look, it’s very likely that pornography was made back then, but there were no titillating pictures in the official art to my knowledge."
BIBLICAL SCENES IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The covering up continued into the Middle Ages. ‘In the Middle Ages, Christian art arrived and the purpose of art shifted with it. Many people could not read, so art had to depict what the Bible said.’ As a result, numerous paintings were made in which Jesus mostly played the leading role, ranging from lying in the manger to hanging on the cross.
The second function given to art was to show the good and heavenly sides of faith, so that people on earth would live as the Bible prescribed. ‘You can't do this with a portrait of your upstairs neighbour on the wall. You have to create an otherworldly reality, so you want to avoid associations with earth. If you paint sexy gentlemen, your attention is likely to be on something else. ‘Look, it’s very likely that pornography was made back then, but in the official art, in the churches and palaces, there were no titillating pictures to my knowledge.’
Although the nude gradually disappeared from art, De Jong stresses that the nude was not taboo in the everyday life of the average medieval man. ‘People didn't wear underwear then and they did a lot of things naked, like swimming and sleeping. They saw a lot more of each other, and they apparently did not have a problem with that. The idea of “you couldn’t do that at all” did not exist.’
THE GREAT COMEBACK OF THE NUDE
After the Middle Ages, the Renaissance arrived and the male nude made its big comeback. ‘During the Renaissance, there was a return to Greek and Roman art and that meant nudity.’ The most famous sculpture from this era is Michelangelo's David, a buck-naked statue five metres tall. ‘Michelangelo believed that the naked man was most pure because man was naked when he was created by God. If you paint leaves for the intimate places, that is also a certain form of criticism. Other artists adopted this and also started exhibiting more and more nudes. The human body is incredibly difficult to paint or sculpt, so depicting a naked body allowed them to show how good they were.’
A WAVE OF PRUDISHNESS
‘In the 1540s, rumblings about all this nudity begin due to pressure from the Reformation,’ he continues. ‘Luther and others criticised the Church and that forced it to look critically at itself. The Council of Trent subsequently made all kinds of rules even stricter. This led to an offensive to civilise the people and the beginning of a wave of prudishness.’
The most famous work of art censored after the Council of Trent is Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. ‘Two months after the Council, Michelangelo died. A pupil of his, Daniele da Volterra, painted canvases onto the most provocative places.’ This earned Daniele the famous nickname, Il Braghettone, or ‘the trouser maker’.
The wave of prudishness also reached the Vatican Museums. ‘They applied leaves to the genitals of the sculptures during the 16th and 17th centuries. Have you come across an image of a statue with a leaf over the intimate areas? Then the sculpture is almost always from the Vatican Museums.’