This story shows how a variety of influences have had an impact on the way that human beauty has been depicted in art through the ages.
Characteristics of male and female physical beauty have been altered across cultures to accommodate varying messages:
- social
- political
- religious, and
- aesthetic.
The objects are displayed as one group.
Direct visual comparisons are made between the characteristics of, for example, a late Renaissance painting of the Virgin Mary and a 1990s photograph by Jo Spence.
And between a statuette of the Egyptian Goddess Neith and a 19th-century figure of a woman from West Africa.