Well, the Bouts looks like a little goblin in agony to me! It's astonishing how ugly most renaissance portrayals of the Christ child are; they all look horribly adult and knowing, not to mention obese.
A fat=ugly equation is common in the world, but I have to say I'm sad to see it here on steepholm's blog, as steepholm has been a good supporter to us fat politics activists.
I wouldn't think they were ugly just because they were fat; I think it because they don't look like babies. Most of them don't just look plump, or fat, which would be normal for babies, they look unnatural. That particular one doesn't, in fact, it's a fairly likely size, though its face is revolting, but a lot of them are just unreal, hideously muscular and developed in a way no baby or even child could be. Their musculature is adult, as are their sly, knowing faces; they look alien.
So you're critiquing the slyness, the musculature, and the alien nature. Those things are not the same thing as fatness; the two are probably best not conflated.
Yeah, but see, I do think the unnatural obesity - and it goes way beyond fatness with some of them - is part of the inhuman look. Some of Raphael's are more like baby seals than humans. It's all part of what makes them so disturbingly un-babylike to me.
If I understand you correctly, then, just as the face, with all its age and experience, is offputting because it doesn’t fit with our idea of babyhood (rather than, say, because of ageism), so the fatness is offputting because it is beyond human. It’s purely a kind of perceptual dissonance thing?
I can sort of see (or at least make a guess) why they drew baby faces as old. Assuming that Giotto, that perfect draftsman, wasn’t incapable of drawing a realistic baby, he and the rest were perhaps were showing Jesus that way in order to the imply his foreknowledge and the fact that, as well as being a little swaddled sweetie he is also the Ancient of Days – the same way you wouldn’t really give a newborn a gift of myrrh. (Freud, I believe, had a different explanation.)
Is there also a specific iconographic reading of the plumpness of some of these babies? Something to do with the infinite plenitude of the divine, for example? Or is it simply a way of expressing the fact that they are well fed and therefore healthy – an association that must have been far stronger in a society where not having enough to eat was common?
Yes, you put it far better than I do! I actually feel so revolted by some of those images as to be almost incapable of rational thought that goes far beyond "ugh". I think the foreknowledge thing is probably true, ditto the healthy plumpness, though the adult musculature is just downright odd and makes me think these men had never held a real baby and felt how floppy it is. If you look at this one, by Artemisia Gentileschi, though he's way too big for a newborn, he is at least floppy and more babylike than most - because this painter probably held more babies than the men, maybe?
Marie Stopes got into a huge argument with the cartoonist Carl Giles about his portayal of babies. They were, however, startingly accurate as I suspect are many renaissance portrayals :o)
Dare I say that I think a lot of those babies are cute (not that I looked at all of them, but from the first couple of pages), and only a few horrid? Some of them the only funky thing is that their head is at a silly angle (e.g., the Barthel Beham, which looks very much like things my children did while nursing) or whatever.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-03 09:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-03 09:56 am (UTC)People do have some strange ideas.............
We tend to send Italian Renaissance art repros as Christmas cards being Italophiles (or in my case, of Italian ancestry. :o)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-03 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-03 07:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-03 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 05:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 11:14 am (UTC)I can sort of see (or at least make a guess) why they drew baby faces as old. Assuming that Giotto, that perfect draftsman, wasn’t incapable of drawing a realistic baby, he and the rest were perhaps were showing Jesus that way in order to the imply his foreknowledge and the fact that, as well as being a little swaddled sweetie he is also the Ancient of Days – the same way you wouldn’t really give a newborn a gift of myrrh. (Freud, I believe, had a different explanation.)
Is there also a specific iconographic reading of the plumpness of some of these babies? Something to do with the infinite plenitude of the divine, for example? Or is it simply a way of expressing the fact that they are well fed and therefore healthy – an association that must have been far stronger in a society where not having enough to eat was common?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 12:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 01:47 pm (UTC)Ugly? No, not for me- just human..........
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-04 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-06 08:45 pm (UTC)