Lucian Freud, Two Men (1987-8). © the artist

Graham Spicer headed to Compton Verney in the Warwickshire countryside to catch the sometimes arousing images in The Naked Portrait 1900-2007.

The human body still has an incredible power to shock. Even though we come face to face with our own naked flesh every morning in the bathroom, when confronted with that of others, especially in a public place, we are still challenged, shocked even.

Compton Verney’s new exhibition, The Naked Portrait 1900-2007, certainly has the power to shock, with its seemingly relentless images of flesh, from the youthful, to the saggy and wrinkled skin of old age. It's showing until December 9 2007.

From Jenny Saville's compressed rolls of flab to the frankly worrying photos of Ukrainian street people by Boris Mikhailov, there is certainly enough here to make you squirm, but there is much beauty to be seen as well, and far removed from the airbrushed perfection of glossy magazines at that.

Georgia O'Keefe by Alfred Stieglitz (1918-19). © Georgia O'Keefe Museum/DACS 2007

Yet it is the psychological and social elements shining through in some of the images that are perhaps the most arresting, and shedding its subjects of their outward shells, the naked portrait sometimes has the power to delve that bit deeper.

The exhibition takes its name from a series of paintings by Lucian Freud, and is the first to focus on naked portraiture as a distinct strand in the art of the last century.

It brings together 160-odd works from more than 70 artists, from Rodin to Tracey Emin, Francis Bacon to Gilbert and George, and takes in photography, painting, drawing and sculpture.

David Hockney, The Beginning (1966). Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Compton Verney’s layout means you move between a maze of rooms – there are 13 in total in the exhibition, and each is themed, from family and personal relationships, to sexuality, nude self-portraiture and ageing.

The exhibition is skewed towards photography, and contains works by many of the great names of the 20th century, from Man Ray’s portraits of his then girlfriend, the equally celebrated Lee Miller, to Diane Arbus’s bizarre and voyeuristic shots of New York’s freakish underbelly.

Perhaps the most revealing images in the exhibition, however, are the naked self-portraits, or those depicting close relationships, like Tierney Gearon’s 2003 mother and daughter shots or Stanley Spencer’s 1935 portrait of his later wife Patricia Preece.

Christine Keeler by Lewis Morley (1963). © Lewis Morley Archive/National Portrait Gallery London

Portraits like David Hockney’s representation of his then lover Peter Schlesinger invests a tender intimacy, while Alfred Stieglitz used photos of different parts of his wife’s body to make up an impression of the whole.

Other darker images focus on extreme self-awareness, like Jo Spence’s painful series dealing with her experience of breast cancer, or Lucy Jones’ self-portraits of her life with cerebral palsy.

There are lighter moments, too. A room devoted to naked celebrities is respite from some of the more challenging images, and something of a guilty pleasure, like the iconic 1963 image of Christine Keeler (of the scandalous Profumo affair) by Lewis Morley or Richard Avedon’s 1962 portrait of famed ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

Marilyn Monroe by Bert Stern (1962). © 1962 Bert Stern

Naked photos of Marilyn Monroe taken just weeks before her death in 1963 are more revealing, showing a fragile-looking sex goddess. Annie Liebowitz’s portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken just hours before he was shot in 1980, is another poignant moment.

So while the exhibition is bound to have something to shock or disturb the viewer, it is equally likely to provide moments of inspiration. It may not be easy to look at so many naked portraits, but they certainly are revealing.

The Naked Portrait previously ran at the National Galleries of Scotland.