The top 10 male nudes in art

From: The Guardian

Riace Bronzes 

Greek 

5th century BC

The nude is not a depiction of reality, the great Kenneth Clark told us – it is an idea. The idea of the nude as a symbol of heightened human glory comes from ancient Greece, where it evolved in archaic times. It achieved a poised "classical" beauty that has been imitated ever since. But very few of the original nude masterpieces of classical Greece have survived. They were made of fragile bronze and most are known today only through later marble copies, often deadly dull to the modern eye. That is why the Riace nudes, recovered from the sea off southern Italy in the 1970s, are so important. These immaculately preserved Greek statues from the fifth century BC reveal the true sensual majesty of the classical nude.