Two Monks Invent Renaissance Art
Previously: Two monks invent Byzantine art .
MONK #1
: what makes a woman beautiful
MONK #2
: nice eyes
long hair
red lips
MONK #1
: right definitely
MONK #2
: you know what’s really hot though
MONK #1
: what
MONK #2
: women who don’t have shoulders
MONK #1
: what
MONK #2
: you know
like when a woman’s neck just sort of turns into her arms
without any shoulders in the way
phwoooar
MONK #1
: what do married people look like
MONK #2
: like ghosts who barely touch
MONK #1
: do most women have eyebrows?
MONK #2
: absolutely not
MONK #1
: what about pubic hair, do any women have that
MONK #2
: no but they do love making out with flying babies
MONK #1
: really
MONK #2
: can’t get enough of it
MONK #1
: ahhh I feel like I should know this but
how long are necks
on average
MONK #2
: little longer
MONK #1
: like this?
MONK #2
: longer than that even
MONK #1
: how about now?
MONK #2
: um, it’s kind of close
MONK #1
: sorry
MONK #2
: no, it’s okay, you’ll get the hang of it eventually
MONK #1
: thanks
MONK #2
: hey as long as you’re drawing
put a tiny man in the bottom right hand corner
holding a scroll or something
MONK #1
: like a baby?
MONK #2
: no
just a tiny man
people will get it
MONK #1
: remind me what Jesus looks like again?
MONK #2
: big plate on his head
can’t miss it
and all his friends were very sleepy
MONK #1
: what did people wear 1500 years ago
MONK #2
: exact same things we do now
MONK #1
: what are gardens like
MONK #2
: oh god oh my god
Awful
Just awful
MONK #1
: oh yeah?
MONK #2
: God, yes
just a nightmare hellscape with half-birds and dancing skeletons
don’t go near ’em
This is all I ever wanted
Maybe monks will invent contemporary art at some point? Or ancient Egyptian art? Or art from Weimar Germany?? Monks would have a field day with Otto Dix.
I'm holding out for de Kooning.
"What do women look like?"
Monks invent Dada!
yesssssssss
R
O
T
H
K
O
In Which The Monks Spend Endless Hours Debating Shades of Brownish-Red
Or Victorian Art.
Monk #1: What should we use to represent Africa?
Monk #2: A white lady in a big-ass dress.
Monk #1: What about India?
Monk #2: Hmmm. That one's tricky, but probably white lady in a dress. With an elephant.
Thank you, Mallory. Monk #2 Is my favorite person that ever existed.
I totally ship the two monks.
I believe it was fashionable at some of these times and places to pluck your eyebrows and hairlines, so some of these may be more accurate than they seem
Oh man plucking your hairline seems time consuming and way too painful.
Unless you have trichotillomania, then it sounds like Tuesday.
Yes, to get the high forehead look, they would often shave/pluck back to crown of the head.
ow ow ow
I feel like this might be Miley's next thing
Somebody's gotta bring it back.
I came down to ask about this! I had some vague historical-fiction notion that this was a style.
… And as the owner of a somewhat high hairline, I kinda wish it would come back.
As a member of the invisible-eyebrow class of people, I can say that I look very much like many of these Renaissance ladies without needing to pluck anything.
(And before you assume that's a bonus, consider that anytime I might want to use make-up to make my facial features apparent to anyone further than 10 feet away, I am unable to do anything to my eyebrows that doesn't result in either Terrifying Clown Face or Surprised Elderly Countess Face.)
AND I have a natural fivehead. So.
My eyebrows are also pretty much invisible, and I am in posession of a four-and-a-half head.
I am wondering if, like me, you are anturally mousy brown and have Irish somewhere back in your family tree?
(I used to get my eyebrows dyed. That helped. In recent years they've darkened enough that you can see the part near my nose)
So what I'm saying is that you and me? Renaissance BABES.
I have Irish in several branches of my family tree but am more strawberry than brown. I'm afraid to dye my eyebrows! It could all just go so wrong.
*Renaissance babe fist-bump*
Yeah. People talk shit about over plucked eyebrows NOW but dang, that's just old fashions coming current again.
#1: what do babies look like
#2: i don't fuckin know man, i think they might be really super ugly.
#1: like how ugly
#2: like a mutant
<img src=" http://31.media.tumblr.com/ec1970c6dfbfb68eba8b579f64e7a06a/tumblr_myovwemLx61r6f0d9o1_1280.jpg"> ;
#1: really? that's really ugly.
#2: i think they might be lumpier than that
<img src=" http://25.media.tumblr.com/dec88de8145d13e36f3c30eb794b22bd/tumblr_mo74v9P5Q61r6f0d9o1_500.jpg"> ;
#1: that's super lumpy dude
#2: yeah, that's right though. super lumpy and like a mutant
<img src=" http://24.media.tumblr.com/c83bb667d09367b0203653953cb00ee0/tumblr_mky8rhgB1R1r6f0d9o1_500.jpg"> ;
#2: nailed it
(These and more from the genius Ugly Renaissance Babies)
That second one looks like he has his head on backwards.
And mom has no skull atop on her head, just a brass plated crown growing out of it.
*cries with laughter*
That cow in the first picture is giving some excellent side-eye to the viewer. "Can you believe this shit?"
Absolutely my favorite part.
I was *just* about to say that!
Of all the museums I've been to (says the former full-time art historian), the Houston Museum of Art has a delightful, staggering wealth of ugly baby Jesuses. When I look at Ugly Renaissance Babies, I just think, "I've seen that one. Houston. Houston. Houston."
I'm just saying, if you're ever in Texas…
There are also a whole boatload (museum-load?) of ugly babies at the NGA in D.C.
I haven't been there yet! I'll keep an eye out.
Especially, as you might imagine, in the Medieval and Renaissance galleries.
(Must-see at the NGA, though, is the gallery of Matisse cutouts in the modern building. So great.)
Look at me, lecturing to an art historian. Never mind! :-/
#1: What did Jesus look like?
#2: A lot like the guy who commissioned this Jesus painting, actually.
#1: That's a weird coincidence.
#2: Enh, not really.
OMG how are these real
Wait, are you saying that babies don't look like that?
Is the tiny man holding a scroll reading a notice that says "all babies must be in proportion to the length of their mother's neck".
I will dream of long babies evermore.
I think Monk #2 has the answers to EVERYTHING. That must be what they teach you in monk school and Monk #1 fell asleep.
omg
he thinks he knows everything
even things he's never seen, he's compelled to expound on them
he's a monksplainer
MONKSPLAINER
Also my neck really is about as long as that long-necked woman's and I have frequently been called Giraffe Lady, so.
absolutely no eyebrows, never eyebrows. eyebrows and you're dead.
There could be an entire entry just on women's breasts in the Renaissance.
"Where do boobs go"
"EVERYWHERE. doesn't matter."
"like on their knees?"
"no don't be stupid, they go on like, the sides, the back, that kind of stuff. sometimes the neck."
"really anywhere above the waist that you've got room."
Major side-eye/hat-tip to Michelangelo "women look like buff-ass dudes with some oranges strapped to their chests" Buonarroti
Also known as Michelangelo " how big are penises anyway " Buonarroti
I heard a theory once that that's because he's scared shitless of Goliath? So it… retracted? (Do penises do that? idk man I've never been near one and if I do it's unlikely that the person attached will be scared shitless.)
Like a turtle.
WAIT THIS IS A THING I KNOW ABOUT.
"Classical" (i.e. derived from ancient Greece and Rome) beauty standards, like those of the Italian Renaissance, favored small penises. Large penises were considered "brutish and savage".
*~*the more you know*~*
That's quite an education you have.
Art school is a beautiful thing.
i'M CRYing OMG he has never seen boobs in his life ever
I'm pretty sure he was a raging gay, so…possibly not up close?
Oh almost certainly, it's just… as if he'd once heard rumours of them, passed down fifth-hand, the truth of "what and where are these things called breasts" lost in the mists of time and across perilous oceans, so he just took a stab at it.
check the first entry in this series for more boobs jokes
Ahhh, perfect.
Real question that betrays my deep ignorance in everything historic and artful:
Was it fashionable/desired (as a woman) to somehow get rid of your pubic hair in this age, because of art? And if so, HOW DID THEY DO IT?
Painfully, I'd imagine, not that modern ways are really that much better.
IF I RECALL CORRECTLY, which I might not, this was more of a trope in classical-style art than an accurate representation of women's grooming practices at the time.
Yes, there is actually a term for this: the "undifferentiated pubic mound." When Greek sculptures were imported into the Ancient Near East, the locals didn't understand why they had no pubic hair or labia and so would sometimes paint them on.
THERE'S a band name for you
Wait. This is VERY curious to me. I know that Roman and Greek sculptures were painted really garishly, and NOW I'm wondering if they actually did paint on pubic hair originally and it had disappeared by the Renaissance. FASCINATING.
I just never considered the pubic hair when contemplating painted sculptures in antiquity. Now I am!
Yes, they did. Also they would carve little curly hair swirls there sometimes. But people will look at you funny if you get close up to study those parts
And yet there are Herms lined up in their own room in the National Museum in Athens, with their little penises all in a row…
Well, Roman ladies used to shave their pubic areas with razors (although that is not something that appears even in my worst nightmares, thank God), but I'm not sure how widespread razor use was in medieval Europe? They had tweezers for eyebrows and hairlines and stuff, but the time and pain investment in plucking an entire downstairs suite is BEYOND my imagination. So I am hoping Mallory is correct and it was not, you know, as common as the paintings make it look.
At some point they gave it up, because ladies have pubes AND armpit hair in early nude photographs, circa 1890s/early 1900s. When did we decide we had to have bare pits? The 20s?
Yeah, actually! Sleeveless/very short sleeeved dresses became popular, and intense media campaigns made visible armpit hair Icky.
Not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the Ottoman empire, it was important to remove all body hair for men and women (married men every 40 days, married women every 20 days–men could retain beards but not hair on their head, women could retain hair on their head only). They would often use this toxic arsenic-based paste and then scrape all the remaining hairs off with clamshells or razors.
D-:
My face exactly.
WHAT.
Razor burn, arsenic poisoning, and heaven only knows what sort of bacteria and whatnot from the clamshells. SIGN ME UP. D:
barnacles
oh you just took that ONE LOWER than anyone else was going to. I cross my legs at you.
aaaaah no no no. Do not need live molluscs, confused at their otherwise unremarkable home being repurposed by dextrous mammals with peculiar priorities in life, prodding inquisitively around my nether regions while I'm burning my hair off with toxic metal paste. D:
(that is not a sentence I ever expected to write.)
But what a sentence it is.
Ancient Egyptians were into full-body shaving too. Shave everything, including the hair, then wear a wig.
It makes me feel pretty weird about being a human, because today we have so many inexpensive ways to be clean and smell good and I'm all "we're mammals, we have hair!" but centuries of human civilizations were like "hair is nasty kill it with fire"
I frequently ask myself when we as a species decided being a woman meant being hairless…and then I remember it's been going on for thousands of years. And then want to punch something.
Yes, true, but it's been gendered differently in different times and places. Ancient Egyptians were into EVERYONE shaving everything. Persians, though, were for a time super into women having little moustaches, because young just-getting-facial-hair men were considered the epitome of beauty for either sex.
Ancient Mesopotamians were way into pubes, if that helps
This whole entire thread has me in spasms, so much so I closed my office door and am sort of pretending I'm on speaker phone.
No, please, no! Why do we do these things to ourselves?!
I'm not sure if they actually did, but if so, it definitely would have been hygienic reasons (lice, fleas, etc.)
Really late to the party, but at least for the ancient Greeks, hair was basically a straw that sucked up semen. So it was good for a man to be hairy all over his body, because that drew the semen down from his head (because men produced semen in their head, duh). Men must have short hair rather than long hair because if they had long hair the semen would stay stuck up around the head, which is bad.
Women, in contrast, should have long hair on their head in order to suck up all that semen, but shouldn't have it elsewhere. So it was considered a good thing to shave and even singe D: pubic hairs.
This probably is part of what's going on in the background of Paul's instructions in 1 Corinthians about how long hair is a woman's glory and is shameful on men because seriously, y'all (I may be paraphrasing a bit).
Ancient ideas of reproduction are weird .
Incidentally, this is also why Athena is said to burst out of Zeus's head, rather than, say, his crotch.
Here–it's more than you ever wanted to know about Renaissance-era grooming-and-beauty practices!
http://renresearch.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/did-r …
I went to Bulgaria this weekend and observed many FANTASTIC instances of monk art but no one I was with appreciated the jokes I was making
I was super hoping this comment was, "I went to Bulgaria this weekend and all the woman had little moustaches."
That's actually a picture of me in that shell I think you'll find*
*not actually true, but the Renaissance was a Good Time for fair redheads, all whooping it up at the beach.
1: What do husbands look like?
2: Vladimir Putin.
1: Exactly like him?
2: Well, yeah, except also he's a pilgrim.
I think Vladimir Putin is the husband in the second painting?
Married Woman in picture #2 looks like she has devil horns on her head. Plus she's pregnant. If I were Married Man, I would be just a little concerned about my future child…
Actually it's part of the symbolism of the piece. The way she's holding her dress makes her appear pregnant, it's like wishing them well fertility-wise.
ooooh but isn't this some big fight among the specialists?
dude she is pregnant look
no that's just her dress
her dress is pregnant? pffff
no man women weren't pregnant in pics until 1962 it's a metaphor
metaphor my foetus. She pregnant as Kim K circa 2013
i'll see you outside
Would totally watch Art Historian Fights, where do I subscribe
A very common theory is that its a sign of wealth and the style of the times; essentially she's showing off how wealthy they are because she has to hold up all that luxuriant fabric. Also "devil horns" was a very popular hairstyle!
2: And all brides are 11 and pregnant.
Long time lurker and adorer of this site and finally linked my WordPress for an account to say – this new series is so so funny, I love it and you have so much art yet to write about and that makes me so happy! The Toast is a delight to read during the moments of downtime at my busy job. Perhaps I'll try to participate more in comments now that I have an actual log in connection, but no matter what, bravo for what you do here!
Medieval Baby Jesus is that portrait whose eyes follow you no matter where you stand in the room. Also, dubious cow is dubious.
SOME PEOPLE LEGIT DON'T HAVE A NECK YOU KNOW. #nottakingitpersonally
(But seriously, most of these people have real human bodies, sooooo this kinda makes me feel shitty.)
mallory, say some things about Lucas Cranach
please
also you know that Jean Fouquet picture of I guess the Madonna and Child where her breast is literally made out of marble, like it is ROCK-HARD and she has no blood anywhere in her body and the baby (Jesus ?) is pulling away as far as he can, because he may be just a baby but he is also a god and he knows perfectly well that a human breast is supposed to have a nipple on it? I like that painting a lot.
I feel like the baby on the right in the flying baby picture is getting ready to absolutely clobber the lady.
I love these dang monks. Monk #2 knows his stuff.
To be fair, the long-necked woman is in the Mannerist style. It came after the idealized Renaissance human figures. Just saying.
Psssst… how does one pronounce "phwoaar"?
fwore, in the same tone as a three-syllable-damn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VvnsAdMMQ (it helps to be a misogynist in the 1960s, and also British)
#1: hey, how do I make the queen look regal in this portrait?
#2: well, you could put creepy eyes all over her dress.
#1: i dunno, seems like it's still missing something
#2: throw in some ears as well. and put a snake on the arm. there you go.
<img src=" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Elizabeth_I_Rainbow_Portrait.jpg/338px-Elizabeth_I_Rainbow_Portrait.jpg"> ;
The creepy eyes and ears are accurate I think. There are inventories of Elizabeth's possessions, and I am sure there is a mantle covered in eyes and ears described.
My favorite Renaissance art story is from an English class in high school. Backstory: at one point, some bro raised his hand and asked "What's a 'vee-sees'?" and when the teacher asked him to spell it, said, "V-I-C-E-S." So we all incredulously were like, "Vy-sez? Like, 'virtues and vices'?" He had no idea.
So later in the unit, we get to this picture:
<img src=" http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090516103454/animalcrossing/images/b/bf/Ermine.jpg"> ;
And we're all like, "What the EFF is that rat" and my smart-ass friend yells out, "It's a vee-sees!"
Fin.
Please please please do Baroque next. Pretty please.