It was the era that became known as the Spanish Golden Age, when Spain was arguably the most powerful nation in western Europe, with a burgeoning colonial empire in the Americas and considerable territorial holdings in Europe, including modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and part of Italy.

And during the 16th and 17th centuries, some members of Spain’s ruling family, the Hapsburg dynasty, were also great patrons of the arts, commissioning and acquiring paintings by European masters, with a particular focus on female nudes — a seeming contradiction in a nation dominated by a rigid and powerful Catholic Church that believed nudity was immoral.

A new exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown is designed to shine a light on the Spanish royalty’s embrace of sensual art during a time of religious strictures. “Splendor, Myth and Vision: Nudes from the Prado” features 28 Old-Master oil paintings from Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado, one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. Of those 28 works, 24 have never been displayed in the U.S.

The exhibit focuses on artworks collected by Phillip II, Spain’s king from 1556 to 1598, and his grandson, Phillip IV, who ruled from 1621 to 1655. Phillip II became a great patron of Titian, the Italian painter recognized as the leader of the 16th century Venetian School, while Phillip IV championed the work of Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Along with works of Titian and Ruben, the Clark exhibit, on view through Oct. 10, includes oil paintings from Spanish, Italian, French and Flemish artists, including Diego Velázquez of Spain and Jan Brueghel the Elder of Flanders.

Thematically, the focus is very much on the flesh, predominantly in the form of eroticized female nudes. But there’s some beefcake as well, and many of the paintings depict biblical stories or ancient Greek and Roman myths in which nudity can be a symbol of danger.

“This was really the beginning of a tradition [of Spanish monarchs collecting paintings] that goes forward several centuries,” said Lara Yeager-Crassell, the Clark’s interim curator of paintings and sculpture. “But there were threats to that collection at times.”

In particular, two 18th-century Spanish kings, Charles III and Charles IV, considered destroying the nude paintings because of their perceived immoral content. Instead, many of those works were transferred to an art academy to make them available as teaching tools for students and to remove them from the public eye.

Even during the reigns of Phillp II and IV, many of those same works were placed in salas reservadas, or private rooms, within a palace or even royal hunting lodges, says Kathleen Morris, the museum’s director of exhibitions and collections and curator of decorative arts.

With just 28 paintings, the Clark’s new exhibit feels a bit smaller than the museum’s past summer shows, such as last year’s “Van Gogh and Nature.” But the relatively small number of works belies the focus and scope of the show, which features some massive canvases, such as Ruben’s “The Rape of Hippodamia (The Lapiths and the Centaurs)”; it measures nearly 6 by 10 feet.

Painted between 1636 and 1638 for Phillip IV, “Rape of Hippodamia” depicts a scene from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” in which centaurs attempt to kidnap the bride Hippodamia at her wedding to Pirithous, king of the Lapiths. Hippodamia, her arms flailing above her bare breasts, looks with frightened eyes to her would-be rescuers, led by the Athenian hero Theseus.

With its grand setting and rich, luminous colors, the painting serves as a good example of much of the work in the exhibit. The female nudes are generally shown in languid poses, lying on couches or in pastoral settings, or bathing or readying for a bath. These are not the super-slim images of today’s idealized women, either: here they have ample buttocks and thighs and often some extra padding by their stomachs.

In Titian’s eroticized “Venus with an Organist and Cupid,” painted between 1550 and 1555, Venus, wearing nothing but a necklace, bracelet and earrings, reclines on a couch in a villa while a partially visible Cupid whispers in her left ear. On the left, an organist leans away from his keyboard, staring at Venus’ lower torso.

Morris says Titian’s model for Venus may well have been a 16th-century Venetian courtesan and poet named Veronica Franco, who also figures in some of the artist’s other paintings.

“Splendor, Myth and Vision” also includes smaller works collectively known as Flemish Cabinet Paintings, in which artists such as Jan Brueghel the Elder used oil on copper and wood panels to create intimate woodland scenes with nymphs and satyrs.

In a sense, the exhibit dates from 2010, when the Prado hosted a well-attended show of 31 paintings by Impressionist master Auguste Renoir, all on loan from the Clark. Since then, the two museums have discussed other means of collaborating, and Clark officials believed bringing a select group of paintings from the crowded Prado to Massachusetts would give them “proper space, “ Morris noted. “They can breathe.”

Contact Steve Pfarrer at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.