From Wikipedia

The Nude In Art

Episode Two

As social attitudes about artistic nudity have changed, this has sometimes led to conflict over art that no longer conforms to prevailing standards. For example, some members of the Roman Catholic Church once organized the so-called "fig-leaf campaign" to cover nudity in art, starting from the works of Renaissance artist Michelangelo, but the Church has since removed such fig leaves and restored the works. In contrast, it was conventional in ancient Greek art, from the time of the Archaic period onwards, to represent deities and divinized humans (or "heroes") in a state of heroic nudity in paintings and sculpture, and it remained so throughout the classical and Roman periods.

The nude has become an enduring genre of representational art, especially painting, sculpture and photography. It depicts people without clothes, usually with stylistic and staging conventions that distinguish the artistic elements (such as innocence, or similar theatrical/artistic elements) of being nude with the more provocative state of being naked. A nude figure is one, such as a goddess or a man in ancient Greece, for whom the lack of clothing is its usual condition, so that there is no sexual suggestiveness presumed. A naked figure is one, such as a contemporary prostitute or a businessman, who usually wears clothing, such that their lack of it in this scene implies sexual activity or suggestiveness (See also: nudity and sexuality). The latter were rare in European art from the Medieval period until the latter half of the 1800s; in the interim, a work featuring an unclothed woman would routinely identify her as "Venus" or another Greco-Roman goddess, to justify her nudity. There can be debate with regard to whether a figure in art is either nude or naked for example in some works of Francis Bacon.

Even though tastes changed significantly, semi-nude themes kept their attraction, even leading to copying of scenes from many centuries before.