The reason why medieval babies look like middle aged men
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2023
- Why do medieval paintings of babies look like ads for heart medication? Phil Edwards explains.
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To be fair to those artists, I’m not sure I could do any better with the prompt “draw a baby who is also a grown man”
Babies only sleep, cry and laugh, so any baby doing anything but that would be clear. You could have a baby writing, talking or 🤔
@@marreco6347 boss baby
Seems like it really takes skill to make a baby look middle-aged
Babies are so much harder than old people. Largely because they have so few details that any extra line will age it by 5 years.
Now I suddenly want to give that prompt to one of those artsy AIs...
"my baby is holier than yours because he has an 8-pack."
Underrated joke
Brilliant quote. I like this joke
@@Ablayw where's it from?😮
@@nduduzogasa5289 ehhh…I actually don’t know, I think it is made up by the commenter
An 8 pack of _what~?_
Now explain why Medieval painting of cats looks like the artist never saw a cat personally and only had it described to them twice
Two words: Cat Jesus
@@pizzlerot2730i’m cryinggggg 😂 😭
😂😂😂
Yoww 😂😂😂
@@pizzlerot2730 More likely catdevil.
hey your baby looks medival
Them's fightin' words, pal!
😂 That's a funny way to be honest while giving you enough time to escape before the parents realize what you meant.
Next up, cover medival paintings of cats
Yes! Lots of them have human faces 😅 its weird for sure
Absolutely
Yeeessssssss
Cats movie in a nutshell!
Reason is cat Jesus obv
I don't know, I still think most of the men who painted these have probably never seen a baby before.
I mean, most of them died pretty soon so that's a possibility
I laughed so hard at your comment. But yeah. Maybe they were monks.
That's very unlikely.
Absent fathers 😂😂😂
@@whereswaldo5740 NO they were not , they were professional painters . Who painted to order .
The last one looks like “mother why have you forsaken me”
Why is this so underrated? I audibly laughed at that.
When discussing medieval art one must never forget one thing: It was all about symbolism, not realism!
It's a good thing, too, because I'm seeing lots and lots of symbols, but not a lick of realistic drawing skills.
Yes Art History 101 early Christian art was more concern spiritual matters not physical representation. The spiritual practices were also more ascetic with denying the body with fasts and such. Compare the carvings on Romanesque cathratrals to those in ancient Greece where the body was important.
Or maybe they were just bad at drawing haha
@@AH-lo3qkthe Romans and Greeks who sparked realistic art in the renaissance were bad at it, rip.
Same for Byzantine/orthodox art, people always say it looks bad and one dimensional but it literally HAS to come out that way because it’s considered a form of scripture instead of art, and doing a realistic depiction of the saints and Jesus as humans is considered disrespectful. People just see something not 100% realism and assume it’s a failed attempt and start laughing at it, so frustrating.
psa: do not give babies prostate exams
Also, a man famous for miracle healing propaply wouldn't need a prostate exam...
You can't tell me what to do!
And you can't prove it to the cops
@@Drebolaskan yes, we can, unless you stop us with violence
Also, we have enough "resonable suspicion" to get a search warrant and involve child protective services.
/half joking
Not that I trust either to reliably figure out what's actually happening or what's best for the child, even if they are trying... better than nothing, though.
Tell that to my doctor, he did the day I was born so I could take my first dump, apparently
@@DivineLightPaladin I stand corrected
that 4th baby is just peyton manning, straight up.
I hate how accurate this comment is 😂
almost cried laughing 😭😭
I was thinking Shane Gillis
😂😂😂😂
😂
That third baby looked like he’s about to help me plan a heist
The way this short is edited made me feel like I was watching a long format video
Imagine mom bragging- about your baby picture, and sharing it with everyone possible. Then seeing this. 💀
*Your not you're
*your
I dont understand what you're saying bro
Sorry if I'm bad at English
@@minebloxikalt1562 you answered your own question.
@@omhh1986 how?
@@JoBot__ pedant
I thought it was because babies wouldn’t hold still long enough to get their portraits painted 😂 (not sure if I was told that or if I’d made an assumption)
That was an issue with early photographs, which is why, when you see a family portrait from the Victorian era, and a child is perfectly sharp, you can assume that it was dead.
@@MelvinGundlach oh my god i shouldn’t be that surprised because worse things happened then but did they fr pose dead children for photos???
@@MelvinGundlach
WHAT-
oh.
@@almonds8895 I need to know as well
@@almonds8895 it’s true
I like how Jesus didn’t even make it to 30 yet he’s drawn as a baby like he’s 40-50.
Talk about the babies, but have you ever seen the cats?
The “Dahh” at the beginning is so perfect
Nice
An elaboration I’ve read, which imo helps a lot: An image of Mary and Jesus is not intended to portray a particular moment in time, like a photograph does. The relationship between Mary and Jesus spanned his entire life, not just one particular stage of life, so the idea was to symbolically depict the entirety of that relationship by symbolically incorporating all of Jesus’s life stages into the one figure of him.
And it definitely wasn't supposed to portray Mary and Jesus as they looked like in their life but as a symbol of what they meant to the people at the time the art was made. Medieval was really so different from our way of thinking, it should be probably considered a different culture.
Uh, actually, no. The church told people he never looked like a baby. They could get punished if they portrayed him as a baby. Christianity hadn't been reworked enough to the Americanized concoction we have now. They believed Mary birthed a baby-sized man.
And it's not like they were wrong about their religion they made up. Or, rather, that wealthy clergy and kings made up since poor people weren't allowed to read or write the bible.
@@TamaraKanesee that makes WAY more sense!!
And the ‘classic’ pose of baby on lap was stolen.
It’s from Isis holding the Child Horus on her lap. Yes. Horus was given defined ages, Child, Youth, Adult. The particular pose is of the Child. His head is a hawk, so it’s difficult to tell
The prostate exam thing was probably not the best thing to say when talking about babies and the church
That's on purpose this channel is anti religion
To be fair, history and statistics have shown us that the world is and always has been full of abusers, the Catholic Church is just the easy target because many people stepped forward about it and it's also very unpopular among some circles.
The fact that priests were telling artists to draw babies who looked like middle aged men is a fact that I did not know would make current events make so much sense to me.
Yet here we are.
“I’m sorry officer he looked 18 in the photo”
💀
Wait until the comments find out about medieval horses in paintings.
They looked traumatised
Ask my cousin Jethro
He'll deny it. But ask anyway.
@@TommyXLourdes what will he deny? Where can I find this Jethro?
Nah it's the dragons I love to point out
... Giant snails
Oh yes
There was an orthodox church I used to walk past and the baby Jesus they had was the spittin' image of Micheal Keaton.
😂
Bruce Wayne of Nazareth.
WHAT 💀
Unfortunately, the image was of Michael Keaton as either Batman or as Beetlejuice. 😊
Explanation: babies just looked like that back then
Didnt know i needed this information. Thank you for this
"They weren't JUST bad at drawing"
That subtle shade.
Actually, Orthodox iconographers require quite a bit of training. They still frequently paint Yeshu' like that small adult. They have a very different image perspective from Catholic and Protestant churches. Many of the painters also use very odd skin colors. Look up "icons" here on TH-cam to see both historic and contemporary examples.
This entire video is shade. None of it is subtle.
as if the va could do any better
Benjamin Button: The prequel
Or the sequel? Who knows?
Never thought I'd hear "babies" and "prostate exam" in the same sentence
I had no idea. Excellent work. Thank you.
Wrong! it was the painter saying "don't send me anymore baby pics"
Yep 😂
🤣🤣 brilliant. Also, someone commented on cat painting from this era - so no more cat pics 🤔 maybe?
The script writer doesn't like realtors. But then, who does?
I like Phil Dunphy 😂
Yes!!
Good luck buying a property then 😂
@@mycelia_ow surprised they have internet in fantasy land.
@@thePronto Yeah we just got it 🤙
My dad is a realtor he doesn't deserve this nonsense.
Is it just me or when he snapped his fingers I thought it was the emergency alert sound
it made my heart skip a beat bro 💀
They weren't just bad at drawing, but that was definitely part of it.
I've also heard that it was to represent that babies souls were as valuable as the souls of adults, that is to say that they are born with original sin and their being saved is just as important as it is for an adult.
I’ve never heard that before, but that’s really interesting and makes sense!
Wow 🤦🏾 Cursed images to understand that children are as “valuable” as adults. Medieval Europe? That tracks lol
Baby Jesus looks like Bobby Hill 😂
*"it's okay dad"*
"That messiah ain't right"
King of the Hill 😂
glad to see other people appreciate how funny fire punch is
painting a baby with a grown man face is such a weirdly specific meme way to depict the lifespan of a relationship
Read something academic years ago that the concept of childhood was not well defined as an age group until the Renaissance. Babies and children were generally painted with adult traits.
That's Phillipe Aries, but his theory has been very firmly countered by Nicholas Orme and others. Childhood was very well defined for basically as long as there have been children. The actual development in understanding childhood that occured after the 1800s really was in understanding "teenagers" as a distinct developmental group instead of going straight from childhood to adulthood.
So ok, the babies in the Middle ages didn't look any different than they do now, the paintings looked like middle aged men.
Yeah, because they believed Jesus looked like a man from birth and just got bigger with an unchanged face, and at times they were only allowed to paint biblical stuff or they would get torture-murdered. 😐
@@TamaraKane Pretty sure there were plenty of paintings that didn't involve biblical stuff even back then
@@husky0098 well yea but there was certainly a level of risk with that and most of the time unless you were a spectacularly famous artist you were living off commissions from nobility and the church so trying to stray from biblical accurate or church-approved depictions was not really an option (in most cases).
@@TamaraKane actually some theologians postulate it was important jesus was an actual infant bc it is divinity participating in humanity that allows humanity to participate in divinity, and that means the whole shebang
Vox: "Make a video roasting Renaissance babies."
This guy: "Consider it done."
bro i started wheezin when i saw the pics mate😭😭😭
"they weren't _just_ bad at drawing" dayum
It's amusing me to no end to think that those paintings suggest Mary birthed a tiny fully formed man instead of a baby. He pops out and just stares at Mary like "Shalom, mother 😐"
edit: my phrasing was incorrect I didn't mean to blame it all on the artist, I should have known better. - Thank you.
And if artists painted nonbiblical stuff, they could get in big trouble. Also, a lot of artists were only allowed to use paint at all if they agreed to paint what the church wanted. This changed over time, but it took a long time. And for years, poor people weren't allowed to read the bible. They could only view bible "stories" in the forms of paintings, stained glass, and sculpture. It was illegal for anyone to write the bible down or share it or add rules and laws to it if they weren't a king or a wealthy clergyman.
Thats what the church told them happened. It was blasphemy to ever think of Jesus as a baby. He was just smol Jesus.
@@AcidGambit419
No, it wasn’t…
@@TamaraKane
The Bible was read publicly at church.
@@jg36 no. Not always. Stained glass was known as "The poor man's bible," because there was a stretch of time in which the poor were only allowed to know bible stories by looking at art.
Shaun Gillis chilling in a renaissance painting
the beginning of the organ music sounded like a tornado siren and I got jumpscared
They just wanted to inform you about your cars extended warranty
The real estate/timeshare salesman comparison was oddly specific.
the grunt at the end😂😂
I thought I received an EAS ⚠️ message when the organs began playing 💀
Artists back then, trying to add adult faces on babies before Photoshop: I am limited by the tools of my era
And color
no, why do that in the first place😅
@@PrincessYiarci they had plenty of colors
@@g76agi good to know.
😬😳They always scared me when I was a child.
You must avoid horror films like the Plague.
The uncanny valley strikes again
@@davidthedeaf fr
"i like my baby Jesus in a tuxedo t- shirt"
Clever remarks: 27%
Actual explanation: 1%
Baby Jesus: 72%
the grunt at the end 💀💀
Lol😂
Ugh, it's giving ✨️little Voldermort✨️😊 So adorable 💕
That last sound😂
don't even get me started with medieval paintings of cats
i started cracking up since the opening 2s 😂😂😂
I've always wondered this
"they looked like that for a reason"
*zooms in on Italy*
Definitely paintings that would make baby Jesus cry
" real estate agent named Dale" 😂😂
"babies selling timeshares"😂😂😂
That church music scared me, started out too much like my local emergency signal.
The fact that he talks about babies and the church and prostate exams in the same short💀
One of those babies had 5 o'clock shadow going on 😂
Even though they looked weird, I still appreciate how they looked. It tells apart of history and what art was like at the time.
Most history: "So because of the church.."
Imagine if this was actually what babies looked like in the renaissance 😂
At this point I don't trust Vox to tell me which day of the week it is.
true
Mary and Joseph had a lot of explaining to do before the Sanhedrin!
And I thought, at least in Jesus's case, it was purposeful, to signify the divine and ageless wisdom that emanated from Jesus since birth, and which allowed him to i.e. know the full scripture as a small boy and teach it to priests in a temple.
Purposeful, sure, fables to get Jewish children to behave, but they still believed Mary birthed a baby that looked like a full grown man who simply got bigger in size with an unchanged face. They weren't really allowed to entertain the possibility that their religion didn't make sense. The church controlled everything.
That makes a lot of sense.
That's true, I read some commentaries from the period.
Never in my life did I ever think I would hear baby and prostate exam in the same sentence
“…Like they need a prostate exam”- classic
In my art and art history classes we were just taught that babies were the hardest people to draw because of how round and soft their faces and features are. Softness is much harder to draw than sharpness.
I've always assumed this was the reason and this video didn't change my mind
That’s some pretty weak teaching. Awful that someone would tell students that, and that y’all would actually believe “softness is harder to draw”.
@@SL-zz7mg it is. I'm an artist and something with less contrast can easily turn out muddy.
More than homunculs you can call them "puer senex", and from laton it should mean "old kid" or something like that
“Ask for dale at your local target store”
Not me hearing "homunculi" and automatically thinking of Full Metal Alchemist 😂
That last baby looked like he was getting a prostate exam
That's why the video creator gave it that "GASP!".
Are we forgetting that all of these are pictures of baby Jesus and deserve respect ?
Because the Jewish church did not allow graven images, Christian iconography was based on Greek allegorical art. The ancient Greeks, who were very good at sculpture, made children completely physically like adults, only smaller.
The dAaAAAaaAAAaaAaAaaAAa got me
"Fully conscious baby" Lore
I read somewhere that it was because at that period of time they do not know childness as a special moments dedicated to education like we now do. Once one passed the first difficulties after birth and could do stuff they were considered as other adults hence why the kids looks like adults
I believe you are bit confused. While there wasn’t this sense of “childhood is for playing and education not working”, as everyone had to work as soon as you were able to standup and hold things basically because otherwise your family would starve, they did know that children, especially babies, looked remarkably different than adults. Our sense of childhood comes from the middle class forming and having enough money to allow their children to play and a dedicated time to just learn not learn as one works, before they have to work and then that idea spreading to the poorer classes and across society. Teenage years were only created in the 40s or 50s if I recall, before we just went from childhood to adulthood, no in-between.
This is precisely the point. People back then did not paint what they see but their representations. The kids looking like bonzaī of adults is the results of their perceptions and fellings. They obviously see kids being small and growing. They don't feel the need to remind that in a picture. This is there estetical view at that time
@@KraftyKreator Children did still have time to play though. Saying "they had to work" is imprecise. Children's work was, for example, putting out nets for hunts, sorting tools or other harmless stuff. They didn't need to work like adults.
Uh...no. Did you guys watch the video with sound on? They thought Jesus looked like a man from birth. That he just got bigger with an unchanged face. And even if the artists weren't Christians, they all had to pretend to be and make all of their paintings have some Jesus in them or they would be tortured-executed, or punished for using the church's paint because the church owned everything.
@@KraftyKreatorfrom what I have read, the concept of teenager came from the desire to extend the amount of time children were required to spend in compulsory schooling. By artificially extending adolescence, they could control when those young people entered the job market, and create a whole new consumer category.
That one baby selling Time Shares has more stubble than I do! 😂
This video made my day and I'm not even outside yet.😂😂😂
That takes a whole range of skills to paint an adult looking baby though.
Yeah the Renaissance was the furthest thing from secular art the world has ever seen
dude when the music started playing i thought it was an amber alert and i got so scared😭
Was looking for a comment like this
Daphne's failure to recognise it as assault, doesn't remotely justify the _show's_ inability to recognise it
The ones of the hedgehogs take the cake for me.
I thought that flute was an amber alert dawg
Its because babies are notorious for not sitting still for hours while a portrait was being painted. So often times they would just use an older person as a stand-in and then go over and make the face as baby like as possible.
"Sure I can draw it without a reference"
The result without a reference:
I haven't looked, and I'm sure this is covered in other comments, but for those who see my comment first, this isn't the only reason. Artists weren't just making paintings for the church because of a self-sacrificing love of their religion. It was rich people who paid them to do it. Those rich people wanted to donate art to the church, so they paid artists to paint these, but they also wanted people to know who was donating the art. So many of these "middle aged babies" are depictions of the people who paid the artist. That way, it seemed like Jesus was a Medici.
Praise the baby Jesus 🙏so tender and mild
everyones complaining but imagine being a dwarf man in that time and everyone is just like “omg guys its baby jesus!! 😊”
That last little sound was so funny to me I choked on my own spit 😂😂😂
>when your life expectancy is 40
They are also portraits of people who commissioned the artwork.
Oh my lovely faith I accepted the good parts of ... Ha... The amount of trauma this 'religion' has caused is unfathomable.
Renaissance era A.I. generated babies
Catholic priests loved giving babies prostate exams tho