![]() That style of painting kept babies looking like out-of-shape soccer dads, at least until the Renaissance happened. "The idea of artistic freedom to depict these people however you want would have been new. In turn, this made most of the people in medieval art look similar. "The strangeness that we see in medieval art stems from a lack of interest in naturalism, and they veered more toward expressionistic conventions," Averett says. This unrealistic depiction of Jesus reflects a broader approach to medieval art: They were less interested in realism or idealized forms than Renaissance artists were. Medieval artists were less interested in realism.Over time, it simply became the right way that people thought that they should paint babies. That homuncular, adult-looking Jesus became a convention for painting all children. This baby by Barnaba da Modena (active 1361 to 1383) looks like it's about to have a midlife crisis. In some of these images, it looks like he had male pattern baldness." "There's the idea that Jesus was perfectly formed and unchanged," Averett says, "and if you combine that with Byzantine painting, it became a standard way to depict Jesus. Medieval concepts of Jesus were deeply influenced by the homunculus, which literally means little man. And that made the range of subjects limited to Jesus and a few other biblical babies. Medieval portraits of children were usually commissioned by churches. The concept of the homuncular Jesus affected how children were portrayed. Most of those medieval babies were depictions of Jesus.We can break down the following two reasons for the man-babies of medieval art: There were holes in the Renaissance - you might easily see an ugly baby in 1521, if the artist were committed to the style.) However, like any intellectual movement, that characterization is simultaneously overly broad and narrow: It's too broad in that it gives the impression that Renaissance values were everywhere, instantly, and it's too narrow in that it limits a mass movement to a single pocket of innovation. (Ugly baby note: Generally, people believe the Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in the 14th century and rippled outward from there. "We might look at medieval art and go, 'These people don't look right.' But if your goal is to look like Picasso and you make a realistic painting, they'd say you didn't do it right, either." Though there were artistic innovations that came with the Renaissance, they aren't the reason babies became better-looking. "If we're thinking about children in a fundamentally different light, the painting will reflect the attitudes," Averett says. The two eras tend to show a difference in values. Drawing a line between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is a useful tool when considering ugly babies and significantly more lovable ones. He looks like he was just accused of violating insider trading laws. ![]() ![]() This ugly baby by Jacopo Bellini is actually from the 15th century, but he's an example of the medieval baby style. Were medieval artists just bad at drawing? So why were there so many ugly babies? The reasons turned out to say a lot about art, medieval culture, and even the way we think of children today. You can use the slider below to see just how much our idea of a "baby face" has changed: These scary man-babies make one wonder how we went from ugly medieval depictions to the recognizably cherubic babies of the Renaissance and today. Paolo Veneziano/Mondadori Portfolio/ Getty Images Painted in 1333 in Italy, Paolo Veneziano's "Madonna With Child" makes this baby look slightly too creepy for a David Lynch movie. This 1350 baby in "Madonna of Veveri" by the Master of the Vyssi Brod Altar looks like he's about to be fired for sexual harassment. These babies look like horrifying tiny men with high cholesterol and strong opinions about housing association rules. But really, just how ugly are these babies? Ugly might be too weak a word for medieval babies To find the answer, I spoke to Matthew Averett, an art history professor at Creighton University who edited the anthology The Early Modern Child in Art and History. Why are the babies in medieval art so ugly? Like this video? Subscribe to Vox on YouTube.
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