Tag Archives: nudity

Was she truly naked in her horse?

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LADY GODIVA WHO died sometime in the second half of the 11th century (AD), has often been depicted by artists as riding nude through the city of Coventry. She was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat, who was married to Leofric Earl of Mercia.

According to legend, she made her famous horse ride through Coventry to protest against excessive taxation that her husband had imposed on the people.

Most artists have portrayed her as being totally nude, thus producing images or sculptures with some pornographic content.

The Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry has a small gallery dedicated to Godiva. Most of the artworks on display show her without any clothing. However, one painting shows her on her horse but wearing plain, unrevealing simple garments. This is most likely how Lady Godiva was dressed on her ride. The reason is that penitents used to wear unadorned undergarments when processing in public. It is most likely that Godiva, who would have normally worn fancy clothing and jewellery, rode through the city devoid of these trappings of wealth and position – this would have been described as ‘naked’.

Our short visit to the Godiva exhibit was most interesting because it opened our eyes to another interpretation of Lady Godiva and her protest.

Almost but not quite nude

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IN THE EARLY 1980s, I travelled to the island of Mljet, which is off the Dalmatian coast of what was then Yugoslavia. It was notable for at least two features. One was that most of the island was out of bounds to motorised traffic. The other was that nudism was both tolerated and encouraged.

I had been introduced to nude bathing a year or two earlier when I visited Dubrovnik with some friends from Belgrade. We used to take a ferry from the city to the nearby island of Lokrum. At the island’s ferry station there was a sign. One arrow pointed to the ‘nudismo’ beach and the other to the ‘ne nudismo’ beach. The first time we headed for the nudismo beach, I expressed concern about my modesty. One of my Yugoslav friends told me:

“Don’t worry, there’s always someone on the beach who looks worse than you.”

Surprisingly, these words reassured me.

Our party on Mljet included four people from the British Isles, including me, and three Yugoslavs. One of us Brits and the Yugoslavs were well-versed in nude bathing, but two of us ‘Brits’, including me. were relative novices.

Recently, my wife and I visited the gardens of Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. This lovely place is home to several outdoor sculptures. One of these is a naked youth carved in white stone. Someone, most probably a visitor, had placed a pair of sunglasses on the sculpture, rendering the youth no longer fully nude. Seeing this reminded me of our holiday in Mljet.

My friend from London and I joined in the nudity that was expected on Mljet, maybe a little anxiously at first but we soon got to enjoy it. After a few days on the island, one of my Yugoslav friends pointed out that unlike the rest of our party, neither of us ‘novices’ were ever completely nude. Either we wore only a sun hat, or a wristwatch, or even just a pair of sunglasses like the statue at Anglesey Abbey.

It is odd what can trigger far-off memories. That statue with the sunglasses did manage to remind me of the wonderful times I spent in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.