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Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being.
This convention began in archaic and classical Greece and was later adopted by Hellenistic and Roman sculpture.
Particularly in Roman examples like the Tivoli General or Delos "Pseudo-Athlete", this could lead to an odd juxtaposition of a hyper-realistic portrait bust in the Roman style (warts-and-all for the men) with an idealised god-like body in the Greek style.
As a concept, it has been modified since its inception, with other types of nudity now recognised in classical sculpture (eg the pathetic nudity of brave but defeated barbarian enemies like the Dying Gaul[2]).
Tonio Hölscher has even rejected the concept entirely for Greek art of the 4th century BC and earlier.
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- Jeffrey M. Hurwit, The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art, American Journal of Archaeology
- R.Osborne, Men Without Clothes: Heroic Nakedness and Greek Art, Gender & History, Volume 9, Number 3, November 1997 , pp. 504–528(25)
- Tom Stevenson, The 'Problem' with Nude Honorific Statuary and Portraits in Late Republican and Augustan Rome, Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser., Vol. 45, No. 1 (Apr., 1998), pp. 45–69.
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