Bare virtue.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Artifact - Brief Article

PICTURED HERE IS a British-woodcut of the 17th century; it's typical of hundreds that once illustrated the era's cheap ballad sheets. The most striking aspect of this nearly 400-year-old image is that it portrays a woman covered quite modestly, but for her bared breasts. Modern viewers might suppose they are looking at a period slattern, but the original audience likely would have seen the image very differently: as an illustration of virtue.

As the British historian Angela McShane Jones recently told Discovery News, exposed breasts "began as a very high-class fashion which demonstrated ... classical ideals of female beauty. The husband of a woman dressed like this would be proud to have his classical beauty on display, and for a woman it was part of her honor...