Nudes. Jp. A. Calosse

      Ignudi

      Michelangelo, c. 1508

      ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

      Vatican Museums, Rome

      His celebrated series of nudes – bathing, washing, drying themselves – represent a whole world of intimate feminine daily existence. Yet for all the life-like naturalness of his motifs, the expression “daily existence” does not prove entirely correct, as the bodily motions of his nude women find their source of inspiration in the ancient Venus. Was that not what prompted Renoir to compare one of them with a fragment of the Parthenon?

      Sleeping Venus

      Giorgione, c. 1508–1510

      oil on canvas, 108.5 × 175 cm

      Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

      Of course, we are not talking here of any kind of mythological associations, but about an unconditional precision of line, classical clarity of form and the special effect of pastel with its “foamy” texture, reminding us how the goddess surged into the world. It is a well-known fact that Degas practiced photography. He was attracted by the unpremeditated composition of the snapshot – a quality that he so valued in art.

      Nymph of the Spring

      Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1530–1534

      oil on wood, 75 × 120 cm

      Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

      “He composes scenes,” Yakov Tugendhold wrote about Degas. “He arranges figures and draws out types in a way which only the camera could do. But look more attentively at his ‘snap-shots’ and you will see in them a profound deliberation and an intent with regard to colour. Using a Japanese compositional device, Degas narrows the frame of his characters, placing a hand holding a fan or the sounding-board of a violin in the foreground.

      Venus of Urbino

      Titian, 1538

      oil on canvas, 119 × 165 cm

      Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

      In this unexpected element of composition, however, one senses not a clever trick, but a profound, penetrative knowledge of the chance fabric of life.” This applies in full measure to Degas’s nudes. Cézanne’s Bathers are also associated with a whole series of variations on a theme. Cézanne was no less concerned than Degas at the loss of the form’s integrity and in the nude he sought the possibility of reviving Poussin in the open air.

      Eva Prima Pandora

      Jean Cousin, c. 1550

      oil on canvas, 97 × 150 cm

      Musée du Louvre, Paris

      He was interested not in the character of the body as such, but in the arrangement of figures striving to attain their rhythmic and chromatic harmony with a landscape.

      In Picasso’s interpretation, the theme of the nude underwent some unexpected metamorphoses. Girl on a Ball does perhaps have a certain allegorical subtext (Fortune and Valour), but the basic idea of its form is revealed by the highly expressive contrast of two forms of nudity – insuperable male power and flexible girlish fragility.

      Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

      Tintoretto, c. 1555

      oil on canvas, 54 × 117 cm

      Prado Museum, Madrid

      It is difficult to believe that the Dance of the Veils was painted only two years later. Here the naked body is filled with the energy of form, as if in revolt against itself. A short time later, Picasso, like a true “dêmiourgos”, began to create a new universe, in which nude figures are perceived as Cubist prototypes of mankind. An accelerated move from the classic to the archaic – that is the paradoxical logic of these metamorphoses.

      Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters

      Anonymous, c. 1595

      oil on canvas, 96 × 125 cm

      Musée du Louvre, Paris

      Georges Rouault’s composition entitled Filles – a grotesque image of perverse nudity – forms a staggering contrast to the hedonism rooted in the aesthetic of the genre. This is no longer a nude, but naked flesh. The sense of drama inherent in Rouault’s perception of the world comes out in formal hyperbole and anticipates the stylistic trends of Expressionism. At the same time, the artist was not averse to producing other images of nudity – Bathing in a Lake.

      Amor Victorious

      Caravaggio, 1602–1603

      oil on canvas, 156 × 113 cm

      Staatliche Museen, Berlin

      Matisse once confessed that if he met a woman like one of his creations in the street he would run a mile. “I answered to someone who said that I did not see women as I represented them by telling him that if I would see such women in the street I would be terrified. I do not create women, I create paintings,” the artist explained. Perceived from that point of view, the nude frees itself from subject and genre motivations and becomes a formal function of the painterly work.

      Cleopatra

      Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1610–1612

      oil on canvas, 118 × 181 cm

      Amadeo Morandotti, Milan

      The body is stripped of all coverings preventing it from being regarded as a form of pure expression. The human body merges with the very structure of the painting.

      Every brushstroke has its own temperature, which depends on proximity to or distance from the instinctive. Some manuscripts are close to it and others are far from it. A drawing by Pascin or Geiger expresses the delirium of Dionysian passion much more vividly than a drawing by Bellmer or Bayros.

      Jupiter and Callisto

      Peter Paul Rubens, 1613

      oil on canvas, 126.5 × 187 cm

      Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Cassel

      There are feverish drawings vibrating with energy and there is also a flow of the line that congeals it all in place. Pascin and Bellmer should be considered studies in contrast. Both penetrate the most chaotic and mixed up spheres of eroticism. Yet, where Bellmer safeguards himself with the cold flame of intellect and a disciplined stroke almost reminiscent of the precise cut of a surgeon, Pascin smolders and burns in the depicted object.

      Venus and Adonis

      Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1614

      oil on wood, 83 × 90.5 cm

      The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

      His eroticism is not cerebral; it is seated in the tips of his fingers. Pascin’s erotic