In the Art History courses I've taken, they usually talk about nudity in the realm of "it represents fertility" or something like that. Yeah sure... Venus of Urbino is totally about "fertility" and she's definitely not touching herself for any other reason.
The pose was copied from Dresden Venus. Where it's much more obvious that she's touching herself. Likely whoever commissioned it requested her to be like that.
Art History courses I've taken seem to gloss over the fact that most famous artwork is commissioned. The patrons of 1000 years ago are the same as the patrons of today. They're down bad and want titties & ass.
Maybe in 1000 years ahegao catgirls will "represent fertility"
and she's definitely not touching herself for any other reason.
How dare you, the ancients weren't tainted with the same levels of sexual proclivities found in modern society. They weren't just grooming those boys because they just wanted to fuck them, they were engaging in pedagogy, not pedophilia! It's why all my twink TA's are underclassmen, someone must teach the youth. - every male art history teacher
I tried to find it, but I'm not in a good position up search right now lol. However! I believe I saw it in San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. Maybe another, slightly less compromised Lemming can source it, haha.
I mean Rubens is renowned for excess, theatricality and the truly fattest of arses, Hokusai's dream of the fisherman's wife literally kickstarted tentacle porn etc etc etc but yeah sure modern art bad sexual puritanism hur burr
This one is a stretch for me, honestly. I'm willing to have my mind changed, but prepubescent nudity was pretty common place before relatively recently. Like even super conservative sexually repressed Victorians didn't really consider baby nudity to be... Nudity. Like, there's just no there there, y'know? Kinda like how today you've got album covers like that nekkid baby in the pool, or they show female babies without a shirt on in movies/on TV. Because before a certain age it's just a nonissue.
Again, maybe I feel that way because I'm not into cherubim penis? Are there people super into nekkid baby angels and I'm just too sheltered to know about it?
I wouldn't even say "before relatively recently" as it depends where you are. Up until my daughter was like 5 or so she was just fully naked or in a swim diaper at the beach and like you say nobody considered that to be "nudity".
But we're in rural Canada where we don't have the pedo paranoia that seems to have taken over America, and we just let our kids run free like we did.
Though it's growing in the cities and small towns now, not long ago in a nearby town there was a Facebook panic over a man in a white van driving slowly around town. Unsurprisingly he turned out to be a plumber looking for the right address.