The History of the Nude Paperback – April 30, 2013

The first half of the book examines the history of bare skin in printed form from the Holy Bible to mythology. The second half features images of sculpture, paintings, and a little bit of photography such as what is featured on the cover. Insightful.

Delightful translation from the Italian with a vivid accounting of the personalities, politics and waves of European history. Wonderful discussion of important paintings and sculpture with terrific color plates. A small, handy read in short chapters. A perfect, refreshing counterpoint to the drier Kenneth Clark book and more current.

This book is a little on the small side as far as width and height but over all an enjoyable read.

The ordering process was easy and quick

Awesome book!

The cover is misleading. I was expecting to read a book with a more modern take on the history of art.The book is divided into 2 sections. The first 125 pages are written the final 140 pages are colour pictures.The pictures are beautifully reproduced and generally restricted to 1 picture per page. All this sounds very nice and at first glance looks very nice. However it's all down-hill from here on in. The pictures are a really boring selection and all the regulars make an appearance: Venus of Willendorf, Sleeping Hermaphrodite [photographed from the back], Michelangelo's David etc. By page 250 I was fed up looking at the exaggerated poses. Page 253 has Courbet's The Origin of the World followed by Manet's Luncheon on the Grass & Olympia. We are then treated to the old faithfulls from Renoir, Lautrec, Cezanne and Munch etc.The 20th & 21st century collection is made up of 16 photographs, 7 paintings and a couple of sculptures. No Picasso, Matisse, Freud, Dumas, Neel, Saville and co.The writing is tedious and I've never come across a book that uses quotations so prolifically [except possibly 'Art the Twentieth Century' by the same author: although in fairness that book suffered from at least one quotation per paragraph rather than per sentence]. I was starting to doubt that it contained a single sentence without a quotation being inserted.The first couple of chapters are bogged down with character names from Greek mythology; we then move through Pompeii before being bombarded with religion. The chapters virtually stop at 1930 with only a couple of pages mentioning the 1960's.A more apt title would be The Ancient History of the Nude. To put a photograph from 1990 on the cover just doesn't make any sense at all and was probably used to make a boring and dated book appear more interesting than it is.I think the readership that the author was aiming for was that of Kenneth Clark's The Nude but it fails on every level. Not only did Kenneth Clark's book have a more representative nude on the cover but it is also a far superior book in every way.If you are looking for a picture book of religious and mythological statues and paintings then the second half of this will suit you well. Otherwise look elsewhere: perhaps Phaidon's Body of Art, The Naked Nude by Frances Borzello or if you are looking for a less modern take the aforementioned The Nude by Kenneth Clark should suffice.Also I didn't check the dimensions of the book, which was my own fault, but I am surprised at how small it is.

A bit pretentious with lots of academic jargon, as if the author is trying to show how intelligent he is. Not as interesting as The Naked Nude by Frances Borzello.