Most artists like live models, but there was a time when painters preferred dead ones. Florence's great master Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-98) carefully studied a corpse with its skin peeled away for his Battle of the Nudes, Pollaiuolo had just discovered muscles. As a result, his Nudes bulged with biceps like characters from one of Bernarr Macfadden's "beefcake" magazines. Pollaiuolo was the first artist to make a first-hand study of what lay under the skin, and he touched off an artistic revolution. How far that revolution carried was shown last week by Manhattan's Metropolitan...
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