DURING THE BLITZ of World War II (1939-45), many Londoners sought refuge in the Underground, even staying there overnight. The artist Henry Moore witnessed this and began making a series of sketches recording these scenes from the stations and platforms of the ‘tube’. As he said: ‘the scenes of the shelter world, static figures asleep — reclining figures — remained vivid in my mind, I felt somehow drawn to it all. Here was something I couldn’t help doing’.

PAINTING techniques were introduced to Korea in the eighteenth century through Jesuit missionaries in China. Such influence is apparent in this painting of a Confucian scholar wearing a traditional horse- hair indoor hat (t'anggon), in the details of the face such as the wrinkles and the use of repeated minute lines (hatching) to show shading.

PORTRAIT SCULPTURE became an important art form in Japan during the Kamakura period (1185-1333). The subjects were usually aristocrats, military men and monks, and the sculptures were made to be venerated by later generations in temples, palaces or great houses. Portrait sculpture gradually became more popular, particularly during the Edo period (1600-1868).

No is a musical masked Japanese dance drama. Lt flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and came under the patronage of the Ashikaga shogunate (1333-1568) after Ashikaga Yoshimitsu saw a particular performance in Kyoto in 1374. Its development was highly influenced by Zen Buddhism. It later became formalized and adopted as official entertainment under the Tokugawa shoguns (1600-1868).

THE ISOLATED POSITION of the Cycladic islands in the Aegean Sea meant that Cycladic culture developed traditions that remained unchanged for centuries. An example of this is the characteristic Cycladic marble figurine, produced for hundreds of years.

SOAPSTONE CARVINGS ARE rare in sub-Saharan Africa, but they are found in a small area covering parts of the modern states of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Most of the sculptures are of human form and some of these are just heads. In Sierra Leone the Mende, who find them while preparing their fields, believe them to be from the previous owners of the land and make offerings to them to increase their harvest.

This famous portrait drawing is of Rubens’ first wife, Isabella Brant (1591-1626). Rubens has used the red chalk to bring out the warm flesh of Isabella’s face and ears. Gentle hatching in both red and black chalks suggests the shadows on her face. Long curly strokes of black chalk define her hair which sweeps back over her head and gently down the side of her face. White heightening picks out the light on her forehead, nose and neck.

This beautiful drawing of a male nude was drawn by Michelanglo when he was planning the figure of Adam to be painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Rome. At the lower left is a study for his right hand.

Hundreds of these miniature figurines with prominent eyes were excavated from the remains of a monumental building, known as the Eye Temple, in Fell Brak, Syria. Tell Brak is the modern name of a huge Mesopotamian settlement that began as early as 6000 вс and became one of the most important cities in the region during the late prehistoric period. It held a strategic position on a major route from the Tigris Valley to the mines of Anatolia, the Euphrates and the Mediterranean.

The Museum abounds with images of the human body created at various times and places across history.As the objects on the following pages show, the ways the human body is represented and its ideal form have often differed between cultures and even within a single culture. Michelangelo’s famous image of Adam, from the scene showing God creating mankind painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome, has often been seen in Western art as an idealized image of the masculine body.