Nude is the physical state of not wearing clothes. Sometimes it may refer to the state of wear little clothing, or less than the protocols of a certain culture or location have been set, the exposure status of skin and private parts.

In the world of nude art is the art form representing human figures stripped of clothing, which dates back to the beginnings of prehistoric art. It reached its apogee during Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. The nude in certain Western cultures can be considered erotic and other being a normal state which is not assigned any particular feeling or emotion.

In figurative art has dominated the representation of female nudes, an anthropological explanation for this lies in the traditional consideration of the mother as deities deities of fertility (in the broad sense of fertility, including fertility eg corn) such is the case of "Venus" prehistoric whose most publicized example is the so-called Venus of Willendorf, in this type of 'Venus' little note of what later would be an "icon" erotic, in such cases rather prehistoric is representing or possibly pregnant fat women with large breasts or breast being highlighted minor facial details (which indicates a personality).

Prehistoric past, gradually and especially with the emergence of civilized states will notice a gradual emphasis on the face, at first highly idealized as it is observed in Korea and the Apollo of archaic Greek art in this area still resembles the art of the great Asian empires in Mesopotamia or the Nile Valley Minoan art But perhaps inspired by a naturalistic art that could bypass the Egyptian hieratic knew highlight the vital dynamics of bodies thus anticipating classical Greek art (the which expands as the nude in three aspects: the idealized, naturalistic and realistic) during the heyday of Greek art (later spread to Etruria and Rome) is exalted kalos (the beauty) of the human body and for this avoiding the rigidities or heavy forms, notwithstanding this apparent absence of hieratic, the Greek notion of kalos poses a profound knowledge of anatomy (at least more visible anatomy), the existence of Canon (Canon heights: 8 heads for men and 7 women) and consistent with these ratios all other proportions as far as possible by following the golden section, thus avoiding any excess (or hubris) to maintain harmony, that harmony can be seen in the special serenity to the positions and faces (eyes, lips) of the statues of Aphrodite or Apollo.

After the campaigns of Alexander, the Hellenistic art of the nude radiates its influence and reach the art of India in which the bodies (especially women) are embodied artistically with typical fees that are highlighted in the curvilinear forms that highlight narrow waists female hips and breasts turgid breast plus added plenty of ornaments (bracelets, anklets, necklaces, headdresses hair), female figures are usually arranged in sinuous lines almost as evoking the plants that accentuate and morbidity (such as contraposto will be in "West)", this display of sensual and voluptuous Indian art can be seen in the temples of Ajanta, that of Suria or the Cchapri among others to have their peak between the tenth and twelfth in the temples of Khajuraho . While in the "West" with the advance of Christianity artistic representation of the nude declined: Christianity exalted very sublimated representation of human beings to consider the theologians that the "flesh" was fragile, perishable, and Inducible deadly 'sin ', before this medieval Christian art (Byzantine art in particular) tried to exalt the "spiritual" aspects of the human body, which practically amounted to avoid the naked (for return bodily performances were painted or drawn with baggy clothes, inflated , and the bodies were elongated in a stylization that reached a canyon of 10 and 11 heads, the very head of those considered saints were drawn from two overlapping circles).

After the crisis of the fourteenth century (the Black Death) begins to show the "West" the resurgence of the representation of the naked human body, just behind such deep crisis that shook much of Eurasia and especially in Europe there is a revival of the economy and human vitality, this results in the early Quattrocento humanism clear preliminaries and the first post-Classic paintings happily posed nude, this is the Renaissance art (See: Botticelli and The Birth of Venus and Spring or - marked by her pose in contraposto "Leda and the Swan by Leonardo). However, in such cases, the pretext for a long time to represent partial nudity was a Christian religious theme (as the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel due to Michelangelo, or if it is the Nordic Renaissance Adam and Eve from the Altarpiece Ghent due to Jan Van Eyck) and total nudity representing some mythological pagan Renaissance such study was started much later by Jacob Burckhardt who could speak of the closed work (Opus Claus) to make a critical Greek classical model that later would inspire the naked academicism, this model is the Venus of Cnidus that it would be picked from mannerism especially since Italy in the Cinquecento (with works like the Venus of Urbino by Titian, the painting in which 'mythological' as pretext is obvious) leads to the courtly or gallant painting in France in the Luises (erotic work by Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher). Meanwhile in Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century with his naked Maja Goya presents a genuine revolution to make a great painting in which the nude is already stripped of all censorship.

Thus until the 1960s (when it occurs and damning the sexual revolution) is usually nude and often erotic business purpose (depictions of nudity or nude photographs and video tapes sales targets), the beginning of the XXI century notes - for its massiveness-marketed a trivialization of the nude.