Published in The World of Tradition

Keywords: Keywords: Beauty, Erotic gaze, Pudency, Renaissance, Western Christianity.

By considering the breast as a significant fragment of the beauty of the female body, recurrently figured in the arts, I analyse how the convergence between the aesthetic and moral dimensions is associated with the intentions of the gazes and the impetus of the hands, from the approach of bodies to the possession of the breast. The sum of biblical lessons with Greco-Roman thought demonstrates how pudency promotes the enjoyment of beauty, culminating in significant artistic representations, from Late Gothic to Baroque, as a consolidation of the values of Western Christianity.