As social attitudes about artistic nudes have changed, this has sometimes led to conflict over art that no longer conforms to prevailing standards. For example, the Roman Catholic Church once organized the so-called fig-leaf campaign to cover art nude, starting from the works of Renaissance artist Michelangelo. The nude has become an enduring genre of representational art, especially oil painting, sculpture and photography. It depicts people without clothes, usually with stylistic and staging conventions that distinguish the artistic elements (such as innocence, or similar theatrical/artistic elements) of being nude with the more provocative state of being naked. A nude figure is one, such as a goddess or a man in ancient Greece, for whom the lack of clothing is its usual condition, so that there is no sexual suggestiveness presumed. A naked figure is one, such as a contemporary prostitute or a businessman (art male nude), who usually wears clothing, such that their lack of it in this scene implies sexual activity or suggestiveness. The latter were rare in European art from the Medieval period until the latter half of the 1800s; in the interim, a work featuring an unclothed woman would routinely identify her as "Venus" or another Greco-Roman goddess, to justify her nudity.
Even though tastes changed significantly, sume nude themes kept their attraction, even leading to copying of scenes from many centuries before.
