Kenneth Clark

Sir Kenneth Clark offers an historical and critical appraisal of the role of nude figures in the portrayal of beauty, energy, pathos and ecstasy in classic and Renaissance art

A Study in Ideal Form

The Nude

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

While it's written in a very accessible style, this book is aimed at art historians. If statements like "The ideal form of Apollo scarcely appears again before that false dawn of the Renaissance, Nicola Pisano's pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa" don't leave you scratching your head about who Pisano was and when that false dawn happened (the book doesn't give even a hint), then you might really get a lot out of it. Amateurs can still enjoy it, but might feel--as I did--that they're missing out on many of Clark's finer points.

The Nude A Study in Ideal Form

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