Their conflicted responses are mirrored in our own body-obsessed era, filled with imagery of nudity. For Christians, however-who represented most of European society at the time-the nude body could be disturbing, arousing personal desire. The meaningful depiction of the human form became the highest aspiration for artists, and their efforts often resulted in figures of notable sensuality.
In concert with new scientific approaches, artists across Europe studied nature-including the human body-with increasing specificity and deliberation. They employed diverse means: in Italy through a return to the models of ancient Greek and Roman art, and in northern Europe through refinements to the technique of painting in oils that enabled painters to capture textures-of flesh, of hair, of the sparkle in an eye-with unprecedented truth to nature. After 1400, with the waning of the Middle Ages, artists depicted nudes as increasingly three-dimensional, vibrant, and lifelike- in short, more immediate and real. The nude-the unclothed or partially clothed human body-has been featured in European art for millennia.
