Famous Paintings of Naked Girls

Naked girls are everywhere, but the images that circulate in our culture still have a lot to do with sex and power. From revenge porn to public medical examinations in school, the exploitation of teenage girls is pervasive.

The women that stand on stage in the buff – save for theatrical makeup – at Naked Girls Reading come from all walks of life. They are artists, beer brewers and council workers.

Goya’s La maja desnuda

One of Goya’s most famous paintings, The Naked Maja signaled a bold excursion into a purely secular rendition of nudity in 18th-century Spain. In tandem with its companion piece, La Maja Vestida, it displays the artist’s skill at handling rich volumes and impressionistic light touches.

Although the identity of the reclining Maja remains unclear, the painting has generated many theories over the years. Some suggest the model may have been Goya’s mistress, while others speculate it could be an allegorical figure or simply a study of artistic nudes without a specific identity.

The painting is also significant because it was painted in the period immediately preceding Goya’s deafness, which led to his powerfully critical Caprichos etchings. The ambiguity of the Majas invites the viewer to explore the tension between public and private identities, modesty and sensuality, and the way in which women are viewed and represented.

Botticelli’s Venus and Cupid

In this painting, Venus exemplifies tranquility Naked girls and purity. Her serene pose evokes a sense of spirituality, while the natural landscape suggests a connection with nature and the divine. The use of oil on canvas enables a soft, diffused light to enhance the painting’s dreamlike quality.

The reclining nude figure is a common motif throughout the Renaissance, inspired by ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Botticelli’s rendering of Venus exemplifies Renaissance ideals of beauty, while the childlike satyrs add a playful touch to the scene.

Botticelli’s depiction of Venus also reflects humanistic ideas about love and beauty, with the goddess’s sensual form and Cupid’s presence suggesting the contrast between sensual, earthly love represented by Cupid and celestial, spiritual love represented by Venus. This painting is a precursor to modern depictions of the female nude body, and its enduring popularity has inspired many queer artists and viewers today.

Manet’s Olympia

Unlike the goddesses and odalisque of the past, Manet’s Olympia is an image of a French high-class sex worker waiting for a client. When the painting was first exhibited in 1865, audiences were scandalized by it.

This is partly because Olympia—modeled on a salon painter, Victorine Meurent—is wearing nothing more than a black ribbon around her neck, gold bracelets, Louis XV slippers and a silk flower in her hair. She also sits in a more upright position than in many historical nudes and stares directly at the audience.

Some critics dismiss the painting’s provocative content by claiming that Olympia is simply a woman who is confident in her nakedness. But this is to miss the point. Manet deliberately provoked his viewers to challenge their assumptions about sexuality and class.

Courbet’s The Origin of the World

Gustave Courbet was a troublemaker by nature, but his 1866 painting L’origine du monde took things to the next level. A close-up of a woman’s nether regions, it was considered taboo even in its own time.

It was painted to order for Khalil Bey, a Turkish-Egyptian diplomat who collected paintings dedicated to the celebration of the female body before he was ruined by gambling debts. He hung it in his bathroom, hiding it behind a green curtain and only allowing selected guests to see it.

Today, it hangs in room 20 of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. While it may no longer be hidden behind a green curtain, its naked eroticism is undeniable. Its subject evokes reactions that range from recoil and disgust to laughter, deliberate blindness and calculated neutral study.

Modigliani’s Reclining Nude

The Italian artist Modigliani created more than two dozen reclining nude paintings for the Parisian art dealer Leopold Zborowski between 1916 and 1919. The eroticism of these works was couched in an anecdotal or mythological context, unlike his later paintings which dispensed with any such pretext. The sitters in this series were professional models, not friends or family.

This painting is one of a series that caused a scandal when they first went on display at the Galerie Berthe Weill in 1917. A crowd formed outside the gallery window and police demanded the removal of the paintings.

This reclining nude was painted on a commercially prepared canvas of a similar size and weave to the other paintings in the series. X-radiographs have shown that they were all created on the same roll of canvas (clique 8). The weave pattern and thread count of this fabric match the composition of the Barnes and Metropolitan nudes.