Looking at the art of the past, we see many images depicting nude women. From Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus to Ingres’s Grande Odelisque, many artists like the idea of painting a woman in the nude in an interesting pose. Even modern images in contemporary magazines depict nude images. Yves Saint Laurent’s advertisement of their new fragrance Opium depicts a nude woman covering her breast. Her pose is a symbol of the iconography, while beauty serves as the iconology. The understanding of the iconography and iconology of this image by contemporary society comes from the fact that the nude image was depicted in the great art of the past; however, the fact that society has become contemporary also serves to hinder their understanding of nude images. The woman’s pose in the advertisment is depicted much like that of many great paintings from the past. Depictions of nude women began in the ancient Greek times when Praxiteles made a statue of Aphrodite. As Marilyn Stokstad explains in the textbook Art History, the statue of Aphrodite was a symbol of enchanting beauty and served as a model of high moral value. Sandro Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus shows Venus, the goddess of love, floating ashore on a scallop shell, arranging her hands and hair to hide, or maybe, enhance her sexuality. Jean Ingres’s Grande Odalisque depiction of a woman’s naked body turning away showed her eroticism and aloofness. Each of these art pieces shows the woman depicted in such a way to show her sexuality. The pose of the subjects is an iconography that is similar to that of the woman in the advertisement. The advertisers portray the iconography of the advertisement through the pose of the woman. Iconography has to do with the depiction of signs and symbols in art. Many art pieces show the women posed in such a way to cover their breasts. For example, The Birth of Venus has arranged her hands and hair in such a ...
