Amazons

It was the ancient Greeks who first sought to depict the naked human body in anatomically correct and natural poses; the Romans followed suit. The fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century meant that nudes virtually disappeared from significant works of art. But the subject became popular again during the Renaissance; and although the proportions of the naked human body in the works of Western European painters and sculptors initially appeared somewhat stylized – as in the painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder – over time, artists learned to convey them more truthfully and even naturalistically