Look closely at a lady's slipper orchid and the shape almost seems intentional. Soft folds, a curved opening, an interior kept half-hidden. For as long as men and women have walked past such things, they have seen in them a quiet reminder of the female body — the form from which every human life…

Almost everyone recognizes the painting, even those who cannot name it. A young woman stands nude on a giant scallop, her hair streaming, carried toward shore on the sea foam. Sandro Botticelli finished The Birth of Venus around 1485, and it has stood ever since as one of the most familiar images…

There is a small limestone figurine, barely four inches tall, that was carved roughly 25,000 years ago somewhere in what is now Austria. She has no face. Her arms are thin suggestions. But her belly, breasts, and hips are rendered with a sculptor's devotion — round, full, generous.

There is a moment in the Easter story that tends to get rushed past in sermons and Sunday school lessons, yet it may be the most quietly extraordinary moment in all of Western religious history. A woman stands alone in a garden, weeping. She has come at dawn, before the men, before the crowds,…