One of the oldest genres of art creation, painted and sculpted nudes are found in all cultures, time-periods and mediums, spanning the length of history. From the statuette Venus of Willendorf, and Michalenglo’s David to the reclining Odalisque portraits of the Neoclassic era, painters and artisan’s have always attempted to capture the nude image. Like most ancient art, there was a wide discrepancy between the way that female and male nudes were created and received. Often male nudes were seen as emblems of athleticism and poise, while female nudes were sexualized. Carved marble nudes grew into an entire industry of artisans in Ancient Greece and Rome, where detailed depictions of Gods, poetic heroes and myths became popular. As painting developed around the world, the importance of nudes rose, especially as a tool in formal arts education, where particular attention was paid to accurate depiction muscle and bone structure.

In the twentieth century, the nude form was further explored through the lens of various artistic movements and styles, from Pablo Picasso’s cubist rendition in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) to Amedeo Modigliani’s reclining women. The tortured male and female nudes of German-born British painter Lucian Freud explore darker sides of the human psyche, exemplified by his 1977 work Naked Man with a Rat. The invention of photography in the Nineteenth century revolutionized both the method and concept of nude portraiture, enabling people to capture not only a person’s image, but also the subtle nuances of expression, changing emotion and visual essence. Photographers like Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu, Man Ray, and Robert Mapplethorpe changed the landscape of nude photography as an art form. While the nature of nude depiction has changed throughout history, the fundamental desire of human beings to recreate the nude image has remained.