Female Nude in a Landscape 1920

M.C. Escher made this wood engraving titled, Female Nude in a Landscape, in 1925. The work blends the traditional subject of the nude within an imagined landscape. Escher was Dutch, but we might look to the Italian Renaissance to understand the visual language of this nude. The work of artists like Botticelli featured female nudes in ways that referenced classical mythology. It was as though, by placing them in a distant, imagined world, their nudity could be accepted and appreciated. Escher does something similar here, and by placing the figure in a strange landscape, the image is defamiliarized. Art historians must undertake significant research to understand an image like this. By looking at the context of the artwork, we can better appreciate how social and cultural forces shape artistic production and reception.