5 sculptures carved to perfection
Leonardo da Vinci famously said, "Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail." In the world of sculpture, this rings especially true. The finest works are defined not just by their overall impact but by the intricate details that bring them to life. Here, we introduce you to our favorite five sculptures that exemplify this mastery, where every detail has been meticulously carved to perfection.
“The Rape of Proserpina” (1621-1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini / Galleria Borghese in Rome
“David” (1501-1504) by Michelangelo / Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence
“Modesty” (1752) by Antonio Corradini / Cappella Sansevero in Naples
“Apollo and Daphne” (1622-1625) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini / Galleria Borghese in Rome
“Laocoön and His Sons” (40-30 BCE) by Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus of Rhodes / Vatican Museums in Vatican
Nudes with Pubes: Art’s Biggest Controversy
Who knew that a patch of hair covering less than four square inches could spark so much scandal across human history?
Nudity itself has rarely been the issue—it’s that little patch of hair that seems to get everyone talking.
A Brief History of the Bare and the Hairy
In the ancient world, body hair was largely removed. Greek and Roman men might have had some stylised pubic hair in their art, but women? If they appeared nude at all (which was rare), they were usually depicted without a single strand below the neck. Prudish? Perhaps. But by the Middle Ages, a hairless pubis had taken on an entirely different connotation—one tied to prostitution.
To keep things "decent," artists covered up genitals with fig leaves, flowing fabrics, or strategically placed hands. Even classical Greek sculptures, famous for their idealised male physiques, often had their "manhood" modestly veiled. But, of course, there were exceptions. In 1540, German engraver Heinrich Aldegrever gave us a glimpse of Eve with an impressive, centre-parted bush.
Around the same time, Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (1545) might be the first Western painting to depict female pubic hair… if you squint hard enough.
The Hair Renaissance (or Lack Thereof)
While the Renaissance and Baroque masters mostly kept their nudes bare, artists like Rubens and Rembrandt ensured their figures had at least a wisp of modesty. Then, in 1800, Francisco Goya changed the game with La Maja Desnuda—a nude so unashamed that, yes, you could actually see her pubic hair.
Fast-forward to 1814: Napoleon’s sister commissioned The Sleeper of Naples from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and, for once, a female nude was painted with the same hairy detail that men had always received. Unfortunately, the painting was lost, and we only have a 1911 study to go by.
Meanwhile, in Japan, artists like Hokusai were already well ahead in the pubic hair department. His shunga (erotic art) often depicted women with full, natural pubes—a stark contrast to the West, where the mere suggestion of such hair was scandalous. In fact, in Japan, it was shaved pubic hair that was linked to prostitution, a cultural association that still lingers today.
The Victorian Era: A Hairy Scandal
The 19th century was a tumultuous time for pubic hair in art. In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted L’Origine du Monde—a bold, unapologetic celebration of the female form in all its hirsute glory. But the world wasn’t ready. The painting was kept hidden for 122 years before finally being publicly displayed in 1988.
For Victorian-era audiences, the mere sight of pubic hair was considered shocking. Just ask art critic John Ruskin. Legend has it that on his wedding night, he was so horrified by his wife Effie’s natural pubic hair (having only seen hairless statues before) that he fled and never consummated the marriage. The union was annulled a few years later.
The 20th Century: The Return of the Bush (and the Triangle)
By the late 1800s, artists like Van Gogh, Klimt, and Schiele were challenging the norms of beauty and eroticism. Schiele, in particular, painted women in unashamedly provocative poses, complete with wild, untrimmed pubic hair. Klimt’s Nuda Veritas (1899) caused an uproar, while Oskar Kokoschka’s nudes leaned more into the naturalistic than the erotic.
By 1917, the pubic taboo had mostly faded in art. Amedeo Modigliani’s signature elongated figures often included a neatly shaped triangle of hair—perhaps the inspiration for the "Brazilian" trend of today.
Conclusion: Hair Comes and Goes
Throughout history, pubic hair in art has been erased, censored, scandalised, and celebrated. Whether it's hidden behind fig leaves or boldly on display, the way we depict the body reflects cultural attitudes of the time.
So, the next time you see a classical nude, take a closer look—you might just spot a tiny but significant piece of history.
So You Think You Know the Rose?
By now, we've all heard that the rose is a symbol of love. Red equals passion, white equals purity, yellow equals infidelity, according to the Victorians. But the rose's symbolic résumé stretches back far longer than Valentine's Day panic-buying, and its career has been nothing short of exhausting.
The flower dates back to at least the Oligocene epoch, some thirty-three to twenty-three million years ago. That's a long time to maintain brand consistency.
The Ancient World: When Men Wore Rose Perfume
In Ancient Greece, roses were linked with Aphrodite, Eros, and Dionysus. The Romans went completely rose-mad. They used roses in their cuisines, cosmetic products, and as ornament in their frescos. They even held an annual festival called Rosalia each May.
Here's a delightful tidbit: roses were awarded to men for great acts and virtues, and it was men who wore perfume made from roses. Before roses became the domain of bridal bouquets and apology arrangements, they were status symbols for Roman men.
The Romans also had a custom of hanging a rose over confidential meetings, giving us "sub rosa" (under the rose) for secret discussions. The next time you see a rose carved into a ceiling, know that it's not just decorative. Henry VIII ran with this idea.
The Middle Ages: When Color-Coding Got Biblical
Christianity took the rose's pagan credentials and adapted them. Red roses became symbolic of Christ's blood and martyrs, white roses of the Immaculate Conception. The Virgin Mary collected rose-related epithets: Rose of Heaven, Mystical Rose, the Sinless Rose Without Thorns. There was a medieval belief that in Paradise before the Fall, roses had no thorns.
The rose symbol became so powerful that it led to the creation of the rosary and other devotional prayers in Christianity.
Meanwhile, the thirteenth-century French poem Romance of the Rose took the metaphor in a different direction. The rose personifies the woman, and his plucking of the rose represents his conquest of her.
The Wars of the Roses: Peak Rose
Between 1455 and 1485, your choice of rose: white for York, red for Lancaster, revealed your allegiance. The term "Wars of the Roses" wasn't coined until 1829, when Sir Walter Scott gave it the name.
When Henry VII ended the conflict, he married Elizabeth of York and created the Tudor Rose: five white petals in the centre for York surrounded by five red petals for Lancaster. The ultimate political merger, commemorated in floral form. The Tudor Rose was so ubiquitous in England that it appeared on the 20 pence coin from 1982 to 2008.
The Dutch Golden Age: Death and Roses
By the seventeenth century, Dutch painters had given the rose yet another layer of meaning: memento mori. Jan Davidsz de Heem's Still Life with a Skull, a Book, and Roses contrasted death with life's pleasures. This became known as vanitas painting—a reminder that everything beautiful eventually dies.
Rachel Ruysch, daughter of a botanist and the era's most prominent still-life painter, brought scientific precision to her rose paintings. She depicted thorns with precision, juxtaposing the fleshy texture of rose petals to the jagged edges of milk thistles. Her flowers were so botanically accurate they could have been used as field guides.
The Victorian Era: The Language Gets Complicated
The Victorians turned flower-giving into an elaborate code. In floriography, the Dog Rose conveyed 'Pleasure mixed with Pain'; the Moss Rose stood for 'Voluptuous Love'; the Musk Rose meant 'Capricious Beauty'. Yellow roses indicated 'Infidelity'. One imagines the social catastrophes from people not memorizing their floral dictionaries.
Modernism and Beyond
Georgia O'Keeffe blew roses up to wall-sized proportions. She wanted to celebrate their beauty and play on their cultural associations while shocking people into really looking at them.
Salvador Dalí frequently painted women with bouquets of roses in place of their heads. In his 1958 Meditative Rose, he places a formally perfect rose high in the sky, replacing the sun.
After millions of years and countless symbolic iterations, the rose remains the go-to flower for everything from weddings to funerals. Umberto Eco, in a postscript to The Name of the Rose, observed: "the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left."
The rose has been a symbol of love, death, purity, sexuality, secrecy, politics, religion, and beauty for so long that it's become useful for any occasion, meaningful for all of them, and specific to none.
And yet we keep buying them, painting them, writing about them. Perhaps that's the rose's greatest trick: after all this time, after all these meanings piled on top of each other, it's still just a flower. Beautiful, temporary, and covered in thorns. The rest is just us, projecting.
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