The story of the nude in art in our times, told by the popular art historian Frances Borzello, with a rare gift for sharing her passions and ideas.

The representation of the nude in art remained for many centuries a victory of fiction over fact. Beautiful, handsome, flawless – its great success was to distance the unclothed body from any uncomfortably explicit taint of sexuality, eroticism or imperfection.

The final chapter illustrates radical developments in art and culture over the last decade, focusing in particular on artworks by women, trans artists and artists of colour. Borzello links these works to their art-historical and political predecessors, demonstrating the unending capacity of the nude to disrupt traditional hierarchies and gender categories in life and art.