There has not been a time in history when breasts, or boobs, haven’t stirred an interest in American culture. While the twenty-first century has seen strides made in the way the Breast is viewed and seen in public, like the acceptance of breast feeding and breast cancer awareness, art history in particular has displayed breasts from as early as the fifteenth century.
The Birth of Venus
While little is known about Italian artist Sandro Botticelli due to his father’s tampering with his birth date, Botticelli entered the apprenticeship of artist Fra Fillippo Lippi toward the end of the fourteen fifties. The Medici family were patrons of Lippi and the support benefited young Botticelli as well.
The Botticelli family was said to have been connected with the wealthy Vespucci family, of which Amerigo Vespucci, the famous explorer, was a part of. Sometime in the 19th century a rumor that Botticelli was using Amerigo Vespucci’s cousin-in-law Simonetta as a model for his famous paintings was circulating. The rumor was disputed as Simonetta had passed on by the time Botticelli was painting them.
In 1472 Botticelli’s reputation and growing respect earned him the opportunity to join a group of painters in Florence called the Compagnia di San Luca. Much of his work during this period was created for Florentine churches, most notably his Adoration of the Magi in 1476. Shortly after he began work on what was to be one of his most famous paintings in his lifetime, The Birth of Venus. Florence was a prosperous society, one that was permissive and allowed culture to flourish. To this day, art historians are not certain of whom the painting was commissioned for but most likely it was for the Medici family who had set up an academy to encourage Renaissance humanism.
The Birth of Venus, painted on canvas unlike Botticelli’s other famous work on wood, depicted the goddess arriving at the shore after her birth where she emerges from the sea a blossoming woman. For a fairly pious Christian that Botticelli was, this painting baring breasts was a complete contrast for an artist who had painted Madonnas and baby Jesuses. Seen as hedonism, the erotic implications and sex appeal of the women did not escape attention even as Venus modestly covers herself with long flowing locks. Today the painting is on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
The Naked Maja
Spanish artist Francisco Goya painted the famous Naked Madja, also known as the Nude Madja, during 1797-1800. Intended to be an image of Venus in the nude, legend had it that it was instead the Duchess of Alba. However, some identified the woman who sat for the oil on canvas as Pepita Tudo, mistress of the Spanish statesman Manuel Godoy.
Goya’s careful placement of the naked woman on a green velvet divan with pillows and a spread may have contributed to what was deemed a brazen nude unlike the timid nude works of the time. The woman’s bare breasts did not create the stir that the sight of her pubic hair did. Goya ruffled ecclesiastical authorities and shifted the artistic horizon of the time.
In 1800 it hung over a door in Manuel Godoy’s palace, most likely commissioned by Godoy himself. Eight years later a companion painting, The Clothed Maja, hung beside it. However, in 1813 the two models for the paintings were labeled gypsies when Godoy’s property was confiscated by then King Fernando VII.
It was hung in the Prado Museum many years later through the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando where it had been from 1808 to 1813. However, between the early 1800s and 1901 the painting that had created such a stir was sequestered by the Spanish Inquisition.
Beauty Revealed
Sweet romance or an erotic gesture? Like beauty, the answer depends on the eye of the beholder. Beauty Revealed, a miniature watercolor on ivory, was painted by Sarah Goodridge in 1828. Despite living in conservative New England, Goodridge desired to send her lover a nude picture of herself. Lacking today’s sexting, the artist, already a specialist of miniature portraits, decided to reveal her bare breasts with a watercolor on ivory. When we say miniature, we mean teeny tiny – the painting was only 6.7 x 8 centimeters. Yet even with such a minute canvas Goodridge captured her breasts, whose perkiness belie her age of forty at the time. Her skill shone in the soft light giving the exquisitely painted orbs an ethereal glow. The tiny birth mark on the left breast gives the painting an air of innocence.
Despite being born into a family so poor Goodridge could not afford paper, Goodridge was a self-taught artist who used a stick to draw in the dirt floor of the family kitchen. Years later she opened her own studio in Boston and was able to financially support not just herself but her mother and niece for over ten years.
Beauty Revealed, became one of her most famous miniature portraits. The painting was gifted to the man said to be her lover, Daniel Webster, a prominent Massachusetts lawyer and politician, after the death of his first wife. The gesture was not the typical condolence for a widower in those times. While she and Webster remained friends all their lives, Goodridge never married him. She wouldn’t trade her independence and creative freedom for the stuffy life of a politician’s wife. Just as she proudly embraced the erotic nature of her body, she chose to focus on building her career in art.
Today Goodridge’s bold gesture of passion and bodily confidence hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Gabrielle d’Estrees and One of Her Sisters
Considered one of the most oddly erotic paintings in Western art, Gabrielle d’Estrees and One of Her Sisters has no claim to fame. At least not when it comes to knowing who the artist that painted it was. The French painting is said to be a nod, inferring to Gabrielle’s pregnancy and the subsequent birth in 1594. Not just any birth, but the birth of Cesar de Vendome, the illegitimate son of Henry IV. While a French painting, the sensual curves of the two young women’s bodies show an influence from the Italian Renaissance. The painting is in the style school of the French Fontainebleau. Experts point to the artist’s skill at using trompe-l’oeil technique in the realism of the sheet in the bath. It was also used in the curtains that frame the erotic scene.
The technique emphasizes and takes the viewer’s attention to a scene where two women are taking their bath together. Vibrant colors exude an unsettling feel and the ring in the hand of Gabrielle adds an air of mystery to the painting. The deeply sensual painting is considered a great success. Despite an unsettled air, the painting was perceived as delicate, accentuated by the light that highlights the women despite the shadowy dark background. The women were identified as sisters of Henry IV, Gabrielle d’Estrees and the Duchess de Villars, known as Madame de Balagny. The playful and affectionate touch as the sister pinches Gabrielle’s right breast was believed to symbolize the latter’s pregnancy. Months later she gave birth to Henry IV’s illegitimate child. Observers noting the woman sewing in the distant background have hypothesized on whether an infant layette was being prepared for the baby.
Today the Gabrielle d’Estrees and One of Her Sisters hangs in the Louvre where it’s been since 1937.
The Madonna Litta
Perhaps the most famous of all paintings depicting the breast is that of the Madonna Litta painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Painted in 1490, the portrait of the nursing Madonna was the most iconic in the canon DaVinci painted of the Madonna. The bare breasted Madonna is the image of harmony in motherhood. While many depictions of boobs on canvas depict pleasure or eroticism, there is no debating the pure contentment in this painting.
The elements of blue skies, soft light, and the way the mother gazes lovingly as she nourishes her baby is holy in nature. Perhaps this could be the ultimate poster for acceptance of breast feeding, a natural act that is still stigmatized and shamed by some. The freedom the Madonna expresses as her breast is borne openly is still one that women today struggle with.
For art connoisseurs studying the painting, the child does not look at his mother as he cradles her breast with his hand. Historians have deemed this painting the best boobs in art history. The painting is symbolic of nourishment and growth. Unlike some paintings depicting boobs in the past, this painting is one seen as a celebration. The Madonna’s infamous boobs hang today in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Painting Representing Breast Cancer
While it seems like Breast Cancer awareness has only come to the forefront in the last few decades, it may be surprising to learn that breast cancer has been documented in art work as far back as the sixteenth century. Many women might be surprised, thinking the disease did not even exist. What’s more surprising is that artists who seemingly only painted the female body in its glory and wholeness, would depict anything ravaged by this disfiguring disease. While there were Northern Renaissance artists who did paint women realistically, imperfections and all, there is one famous Italian painting that depicts breast cancer.
The Night, painted by Michele of Ridolfo of Ghirlandaio, dating back to 1555-1565, shocked the art world with its depiction of an irregular breast, later determined to be afflicted by breast cancer. The painting stunned the art world as paintings of bare boobs usually garner the attention of men. The brutal depiction of the ravages of breast cancer was seen as realistic but respectful. The painting is believed to be one of the earliest depictions of breast cancer leading cancer researchers to see that the disease is not a modern malady. The Night hangs in the Galleria Colonna in Rome, Italy.
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