Reclining-nude

František Šindelář's painting "Two nude girls" depicts two girls reclining on the grass in the forest near what seems to be a brook.

Franz von Stuck's "Springtime of Love" depicts a beautiful nymph, reclining naked in a verdant landscape, listening to a garlanded youth playing a pipe. They are at once at ease with each other and with the countryside around them. It is a scene of harmony and sensual abandonment. Von Stuck frequently depicted a mythological world populated with nymphs and centaurs, baccantes and fauns. It was a playful world with distinctly comic and erotic undertones.

Édouard Manet - Olympia (Olympia)

David’s "Love and Psyche", also known as "Cupid and Psyche", represents Cupid, the god of love and eroticism, in bed with the beautiful mortal Psyche. The painting explores the ambivalence between idealized love and physical relationship, between sacredness versus human. David represents Psyche as a pure and perfect young woman, while Cupid is depicted as a candid teenager, very human-like and happy of his sexual conquest.

François Édouard Picot’s Amor and Psyche shows the lovers as idealized, porcelain-smooth bodies with Cupid leaning in a tender embrace to give a kiss to Psyche who is turned towards the viewer, not seeing Cupid.

“The Naked Maja” by Francisco Goya was a very controversial painting at the time, showcasing the artist’s bold exploration of sensuality and of the female form. One reason the painting was so controversial is that it was an unapologetic portrait of a nude woman, without hiding behind the false pretense of mythology or religion.

Anonymous - Fresco of Mars and Venus