Masks are required for all visitors. Limestone or terracotta plaques showing nude women in the niche of an Egyptian-form shrine were popular from BC. Sometimes architectural pediments are carved and Bes figures or Hathor columns may be represented beside the niche; here traces of paint on the jambs can no longer be resolved into any particular form. The bobbed-haired voluptuous woman has a long history in the first millennium, but no precise identity.
Navigation menu
Visiting The Met?
Representing the human body has been one of the major themes throughout art history since prehistoric times. In fact, among the paintings that have marked history, many are nude paintings of bodies, more specifically naked woman. The body is a fantastic source of inspiration for an artist because it is simultaneously the embodiment of beauty, desire, reverie and the forbidden. And it is often the nude paintings that cause scandal in art. Over the centuries and across movements, nude paintings have created an aesthetic of the body and beauty. Beyond the subject represented, the painters create imagery of the human body, often very personal and sometimes even against the artistic rules of their time.
Object Details
Perhaps the history of the nude in art, which traditionally begins with the heroic male of Greek art of the classical period 6th - 5th century BC , should be pushed back to around , BC. This is the date of the tiny statuette, probably designed to be held in the hand, popularly called the Willendorf Venus and depicting a corpulent female. Like much early art, she was almost certainly a fertility symbol of some kind. Indian temple art, some dating from at least the 1st century BC, often depicts voluptuous female nudes. Again, these erotic figures had a serious religious function, representing various manifestations of fertility deities.
India's uncomfortable relationship with periods is back in the headlines. College students living in a hostel in the western Indian state of Gujarat have complained that they were made to strip and show their underwear to female teachers to prove that they were not menstruating. The 68 young women were pulled out of classrooms and taken to the toilet, where they were asked to individually remove their knickers for inspection. The incident took place in the city of Bhuj on Tuesday. They said a hostel official had complained to the college principal on Monday that some of the students were breaking rules menstruating women are supposed to follow. According to these rules, women are barred from entering the temple and the kitchen and are not allowed to touch other students during their periods. At meal times, they have to sit away from others, they have to clean their own dishes, and in the classroom, they are expected to sit on the last bench. One of the students told BBC Gujarati's Prashant Gupta that the hostel maintains a register where they are expected to enter their names when they get their periods, which helps the authorities to identify them. But for the past two months, not one student had entered her name in the register - perhaps not surprising considering the restrictions they have to put up with if they do.