Throughout the depictions of the Liberal Arts, many of the disciplines are dressed in chitons, antique dresses that form to their body and create dynamism through the drapery. However, the disciplines of Grammar (figure 58), Rhetoric (figure 59), and Theology (figure 60) are shown bare-breasted while Prospectiva (figure 61)  is shown with one breast covered by her dress. These sharply contrast with earlier iterations of the Liberal Arts that were fully clothed and regal. Although scholars have mentioned the nudity of certain disciplines, further development on why these disciplines were selected has yet to be developed.[136] Thus, this section seeks to establish connections between the female body and the hierarchy of the disciplines.

In examining the nude female body, one must understand the various implications that these bodies represented, in their differences in location and intended viewership. In examining Pollaiuolo’s semi-nude bodies rendered on the papal tomb, it is likely that these nudes would have been associated with extreme states of being akin to the discipline being represented at the pinnacle of their respective study.[137] Thus, encouraging the viewer to reach their full potential in each discipline to achieve the enlightenment that could only be reached through the mastery of these studies. They “vigorously perform their knowledge” within each panel, serving as exemplars for the male viewership.[138] Further, reflecting the concept that nudity can be a civilizing process, these figures do not seem to have any shame about being nude: instead, they are demonstrating that through their learning, they have reached shameless nudity, signifying truth.[139]

Additionally, it is important to note that the viewership in this chapel of the tomb would have been predominantly male as for 364 days of the year, the only individuals allowed in the chapel were those of the all-male clergy and members of the church. While these female figures could convey their learning and importance to Humanist scholarship, ultimately, they still were eroticized female bodies, presented as passive objects for the male viewers to contemplate. However, in a broader examination of the Renaissance nude, there were proper ways to view the nude, equivocating nudity as a state of grace, and purity similar to Eve before the Fall. As Sherry Lindquist details in her examination of nudity within Medieval and Renaissance art, “viewing nudes ‘correctly’ involved knowledge of classical texts and objects, plus the ability to distinguish aesthetic from bodily pleasures.”[140] Wright argued that the activities that each discipline is engrossed in, combined with the objects filling the composition serve to “suppress or regulate their fleshy presence.”[141] However, I believe that these objects and the figures act of study further accentuate the notion that each individual is at their peak performance initially established by their semi-nudity. By developing traditional allegorical figures of female Liberal Arts that are clothed, Pollaiuolo creates a unique depiction of the Liberal Arts with the female nude serving as a hierarchical distinction between the other figures.  Pollaiuolo’s use of the female nude allows the typically male viewer to understand the importance of the Liberal Arts, recognizing that only through pursuit and domination over each discipline can one achieve divine wisdom. The female nude allowed for many associations: the intellectual virtues of truth, purity, and grace; spiritual purity associated with a lack of bodily shame and immaculacy; and eroticism in their nakedness.

With the figure of Theology at the top, she along with Philosophy “are the sum of all arts” appearing at the head of the tomb.[142] The figure of Theology’s drapery seems to expose more of her leg and arm, and she appears the most nude of all the figures. Her pose is the most dynamic with an arm bent up, held over her head. The materiality of the bronze medium emphasizes her body against the textured background. The medium of bronze allowed light to interact with the surface, imbuing the figures with “sensuality and vitality.”[143] Further, although her breasts have less reflection when compared to the other figures, her stomach is positioned in such a way as if to emphasize her womb, furthering the connections between Theology as a type for Mary and Diana. Thus, as the body of Theology is one of the most nude figures, it therefore serves to secure her position as the head of all the Arts and connects her to an extreme state of being, one absorbed in her study with a lack of shame regarding her lack of clothing.

Returning to the discussion of nudity to convey the hierarchical nature of the Liberal Arts, the figures of Grammar and Rhetoric, while almost as nude as the Theology figure, can be identified through their nudity as next in the hierarchy of the Liberal Arts. While these two figures are commonly found in depictions of the Liberal Arts, as they make up two of the three disciplines of the Trivium, they differ from Capella’s description that was typically used to identify and depict their allegorical figures. The figures of Grammar and Rhetoric are partially nude, demonstrating their importance among the other figures of the Arts. Through this understanding, the degrees of nudity for each figure might be understood to express their ranking in the hierarchy of the Liberal Arts.

However, this is complicated by the understanding that Grammar and Rhetoric as part of the Trivium were placed among the lower but foundational disciplines, operating as the basis for further learning. It is interesting however that Capella does include an aside regarding nudity in the introduction to all the arts within the book on Grammar. Writing “utility cannot clothe the naked truth,” Capella relates this to a poet making weak and straightforward statements, unadorned with beauty and ornament.[144] In this sense, Capella equates the figure of Grammar and therefore Rhetoric to the naked truth, ideas which were thus reflected in Pollaiuolo’s relief. As examined earlier, Grammar and Rhetoric would be likely equivalent due to their similar pose and corresponding placement in the Trivium. Yet, by including these disciplines of semi-nude, Pollaiuolo evokes their importance to liberal arts education, as without these subjects, there was no way to move beyond into mastery of other subjects. Additionally, these two disciplines allowed scholars to both understand and reiterate the previous classical texts in the vernacular, through their writing and oratory skills.

The final figure that is semi-nude is that of Prospectiva. Reflecting the shift and resurgence of the Liberal Arts, it can therefore be understood that Prospectiva is nude to represent this change in the scholarship of the Liberal Arts. Additionally, Pollaiuolo illustrates his mastery of the nude form, demonstrating the advancements made in naturalism throughout the Renaissance. This mastery of naturalism and the ideal nude body conveys the shift of visual arts from a physical to intellectual discipline. As Prospectiva receives the Divine Light from Theology, by representing her as semi-nude, Pollaiuolo further connects the divine knowledge to the body. As Platonists understood idealized physical beauty as a visual manifestation of the “immortality of the soul,” by rendering these disciplines in an idealized form, Pollaiuolo associated these disciplines and Sixtus through the tomb to Platonic thought, which was pervasive throughout Sixtus’s intellectual circle.[145]