so i just hold the beanspoon near my nose and scream, is that right
ah, waiter, another bunch of raw green onions for the table, please

YELLING NEAR BEANS IS WHAT EATING IS

Every Mannerist worth his weight in papal commissions loves painting Mary Magdalene. Wake up, paint Mary Magdalene, repeat, that was the artist’s watchword of the Renaissance. And it’s not a Mary Magdalene painting if she’s not half-dressed and brimming with repentance. If there was one thing Mary Magdalene loved, it was repenting. Wake up, repent of something, repeat, that was her watchword, presumably, if centuries-later paintings are anything to go by.

In the Gospels themselves, Mary Magdalene doesn’t show up much until later on in Jesus’ ministry; he cured her of a number of vague ailments which were described as “the plagues of seven demons,” and she was the first person to visit his tomb after the Crucifixion. (Lovely side note – religious scholars have pointed out that although Jesus’ twelve male disciples fled in the hours following his death, Mary wasted no time in going to see his body. In the Bible, it’s Mary Magdalene who becomes the first to learn and tell others of the Resurrection – which means that in the hours between seeing the risen Christ and reaching the other disciples, Mary Magdalene was the entire church.)

Anyhow! By the time of the European Renaissance, Mary Magdalene was conflated with numerous other Marys in the New Testament, particularly with an unnamed prostitute who coated Jesus’ feet in expensive perfume and her own tears. And, if you have learned nothing else from this occasional series, it is that European Renaissance-era dudes loved nothing more than injecting sexy babes into their Biblical tableaux. So Mary Magdalene is often painted repenting of her numerous sins…sexily.

Sexiness and repentance, by the way, are two very difficult feelings to paint simultaneously in the same person. Guess which of the two usually won out?

You’re a person, I’ll assume you’re broadly familiar with the fall of the Titans, but for a quick catch-up, let me bring you up to speed on “The Mutilation Of Uranus By Saturn,” a 16th-century painting by Giorgio Vasari. Uranus being the father of the Titans by way of Gaia, but also the father of the enormously-less popular Cyclopses and the hundred-handed Centimanes, whom he imprisoned in Tartarus shortly after their births by virtue of their being right disgusting.

FINE. Okay. This upsets Gaia, who demands that one of her Titan sons castrate his father with a flint sickle, and the only one to take her up on the offer is Cronus (of future baby-eating fame), and the rest of the siblings watch as he overthrows his father.

Which, so far, is pretty standard-issue messed up Greek mythology stuff. AND YET. Please pay careful attention to the ladies on the far right, watching their brother forcibly castrate their father with a sharp piece of stone.