13 Nudes That Changed Western Art History

For as long as people have made art, they have depicted something they know intimately: the nude human form. One of the oldest surviving works of art—the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf, which dates to between 24,000 and 22,000 B.C.—is a limestone figurine of a voluptuous nude woman. In the subsequent millennia, the nude has populated religious art, illustrations of mythological stories, works made for the pure enjoyment of looking, and images that distill the human shape to its most