All sorts of bodies are going bare I

T seems nudity is on the rise in tourism again, with several tales of exposed bits from the UK to Spain to Australia this week. Starting with high art, the National Gallery in London is about to display a statue of Christ — entirely naked, with all parts intact — carved by Michelangelo.

The statue is believed to be an earlier version of his The Risen Christ, which stands in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.

That masterpiece — completed in 1521, when he was 46 — is not dissimilar to his extremely chiselled and anatomically correct David, though it is perhaps more startling since it shows a proud and muscular Christ, with post-Crucifixion wounds in his side and leaning on the cross, in the nude.

The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones explains that such detailed depictions were not uncommon during the Renaissance, when full nudity was understood to be symbolic of Christ’s “full humanity, his incarnation on Earth”.

But as times changed and mankind became more conservative, after Michelangelo’s death the starkers statue was given a fig leaf of sorts, a baroque metal veil to cover the bits the great artist had carved. This modest addition is still in place to this day.

As for the other version, art historians say Michelangelo had almost finished chiselling out a huge block of marble for the commissioned work when he discovered it had a flaw — a dark mark in the stone running like a scar across Christ’s face.

So he abandoned it and got a new block of marble, from which he chiselled the masterpiece now standing in the church in Rome.

Meanwhile, that first attempt was forgotten, then reworked — the head, face and most of the cross were added later by unknown artists — and ended up in the San Vincenzo Monastery in Bassano Romano.

It was only in 1997 that Michelangelo’s hand in the work was recognised.

Now that version is set to go on display in London in all its glory, on loan for the Michelangelo and Sebastiano exhibition. It runs from March 15 until July 25, and examines the relationship between Michelangelo and his protégé Sebastiano del Piombo.

Despite our own prudish misgivings that may yet survive, Jones argues that Michelangelo would never have intended for the statue to offend. Rather, he says, the figure “displays the heroic dignity and strength of a classical hero”.

It shows Christ risen from the dead, and His body, wounds and all, “now stands triumphantly alive before us”.

That’s a proud notion that, at the very least, a growing group of whacky Australians appear to embrace. They’re standing “triumphantly alive before us” with the help of our friend Instagram.

The account @getnakedaustralia mostly features snaps of men and women facing away from the camera and looking out over incredible and inspiring views in different parts of the country.