How did the Reniassance artists portray the human body?

Roman republican sculpture was sculptural portraiture (busts) which was highly realistic in a "warts and all" manner. It highlighted the signs of age of statesmen because age was associated with wisdom. It also represented the republican ideas of dignitas, integritas et gravitas. With rule by emperors the Romans adopted the full bodied statues of the Hellenistic style of the Greeks. At this point Romans and Greek sculpture became pretty much the same. The emperors were depicted as being young and the vigour of youth was often presented as a leadership quality. Statues also became idealised and mythologised in imitation of the statues of the Hellenistic rulers.

The statues of Classical Greek sculpture represented the human body in a realistic and faithful. It also started paying more attention to posture and movement. Hellenistic statues (both Greek and Roman) increased the detail of their depiction of the human body, particularly the musculature. They also took the study and depiction of movement further, taking it to a new level. Hellenistic sculpture also developed the ability to reproduce human emotions with great intensity. A prime example of this is the acute intensity of the pain, the extreme torsion of the body and the great detail of the muscles of Laocoon in the statue called Laocoon and His Sons. This statue has been seen as "the prototypical icon of human agony" in Western art,