As the body is a place to express identity, many artists began to see the body as a way to comment on identity politics: gender, sexuality, race and. For artists, representing the human figure means more than simply reproducing the image of a person. A portrait or sculpture can also capture and express the artist's special vision on the subject. This type of art can make us feel sympathy, fun, identification, pity, or even adoration. However, with the growth of Christianity, the body in art became a place of suffering and piety.
Unlike the invulnerable Greek gods, the figure of Christ offered artists the opportunity to represent a divine subject who also suffered the wounds of the crucifixion. Mantegna's late-15th century painting, The Lamentation of Christ, for example, focuses on the physical perfection of his model, while stressing the wounds inflicted on him and the sacrifice that Christ made for humanity. In the same way, many artists chose beautiful human models to represent Christian saints and martyrs, whose suffering and sacrifice for their faith are represented by disembodied organs, such as eyes or breasts, that the saints hold aloft, while their bodies appear to remain attractively intact.
