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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- 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.
Ima start saying that bout newborns now
Thanks, I‘ll say this in the future when I don‘t want to lie.
OMFG 💀😭
The last one looks like “mother why have you forsaken me”
Why is this so underrated? I audibly laughed at that.
Hast*
Actually that small middle aged man looked like he was asking for a divorce.
LENT REFFEERREENNCEEEEEE
Right!!!! Poor baby Jesus looks constipated or suffering. Something. Lolololololol!
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 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
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 takes a whole range of skills to paint an adult looking baby though.
I just came back from Italy. Had a lot of fun looking at these baby faces while visiting museums. Made a whole album on this topic. They are pure gold for meme creation. Thanks for the explanation!
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 “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
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.
The "uuuchgh" at the end sealed the laughing like a screaming teapot for me.
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
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?
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
I like how Jesus didn’t even make it to 30 yet he’s drawn as a baby like he’s 40-50.
He died at 33. 😂
33
Didnt know i needed this information. Thank you for this
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. 😊
Benjamin Button: The prequel
Or the sequel? Who knows?
"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
Never thought I'd hear "babies" and "prostate exam" in the same sentence
I had no idea. Excellent work. Thank you.
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.
That third baby looked like he’s about to help me plan a heist
😂😂😂
"they weren't _just_ bad at drawing" dayum
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”
💀
the grunt at the end😂😂
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.
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
Baby Jesus looks like Bobby Hill 😂
*"it's okay dad"*
"That messiah ain't right"
King of the Hill 😂
Dahuaahuh 😧…….to start the video is absolutely perfect 😂😂
That noise at the end got me! 🤣🤣🤣
The real estate/timeshare salesman comparison was oddly specific.
They just wanted to inform you about your cars extended warranty
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.
The way this short is edited made me feel like I was watching a long format video
>when your life expectancy is 40
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.
Talk about the babies, but have you ever seen the cats?
the grunt at the end 💀💀
Lol😂
Explanation: babies just looked like that back then
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.
I've always wondered this
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
They weren't just bad at drawing, but that was definitely part of it.
Bad at Drawing?
These are beautifull artworks and the further back you look in time the more you Will see that we have as humans learned absolutely nothing new about Expressing our surroundings and what is significant to us through art. When Picasso visited lascaux in the dordogne one of the most Well preserved and most spectacular of Cave paintings in Europe with competition from Australien aboriginals.
He looked at the Cave Walls painted around him like a tunnel of art and Said to his guide “they invented everything” and before leaving he said in both an amazed and irritated Way that “ we have learned absolutely nothing at all!”
@@magnipettersson4432 I believe it's a joke. Anyway, the good or bad argument is pointless, it's all subjective. While the Picasso story is interesting, I only value his opinion as much as another youtube comment. Art is only cool if you remove the pedestals, in my opinion.
@@nullobject7966 Well thats excacly what he did by admitting what was painted with fingers over 12.000 years ago is on par with modern day artists. He is literally making the art cool according to what you require for it to be cool. That Cave wasnt put on a pedestal as a piece of art but Rather a cultural place for the people who lived there. The paintings were everyday for Them. No pedestal. Picasso removed every single modern artist from their pedestal or perhaps he just pushed the Cave paintings into the pedestal next to Them? Thats problaby what makes you Think lesser of it
@magnipettersson4432 I was referring to Picasso on a pedestal. I just disagree with his philosophy there. Art isn't about being new, unique, or inventing something. That's the ego. Art is about expression. He was so full of himself that just seeing a pure form of expression annoyed him.
Daphne's failure to recognise it as assault, doesn't remotely justify the _show's_ inability to recognise it
Ugh, it's giving ✨️little Voldermort✨️😊 So adorable 💕
Even though they looked weird, I still appreciate how they looked. It tells apart of history and what art was like at the time.
i started cracking up since the opening 2s 😂😂😂
don't even get me started with medieval paintings of cats
Homunculus is one of my favorite words lol
Me too. Such a satisfying and silly word. Homunculus... Homunculi...
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 ?
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 💀
" real estate agent named Dale" 😂😂
"babies selling timeshares"😂😂😂
"they looked like that for a reason"
*zooms in on Italy*
I love the way you clown the babies, calling them real estate agents and such. 😂😂😂
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
Yeah the Renaissance was the furthest thing from secular art the world has ever seen
Imagine if this was actually what babies looked like in the renaissance 😂
The music change at Italy's slide-in sounded enough like a weather alert to make me jump! 😅
I thought that flute was an amber alert dawg
That one baby selling Time Shares has more stubble than I do! 😂
Most history: "So because of the church.."
The dAaAAAaaAAAaaAaAaaAAa got me
Not me hearing "homunculi" and automatically thinking of Full Metal Alchemist 😂
Praise the baby Jesus 🙏so tender and mild
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.
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.
"Sure I can draw it without a reference"
The result without a reference:
"i like my baby Jesus in a tuxedo t- shirt"
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.
Clever remarks: 27%
Actual explanation: 1%
Baby Jesus: 72%
Mary and Joseph had a lot of explaining to do before the Sanhedrin!
One of those babies had 5 o'clock shadow going on 😂
Catholic priests loved giving babies prostate exams tho
More than homunculs you can call them "puer senex", and from laton it should mean "old kid" or something like that
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.
They are also portraits of people who commissioned the artwork.
That last one and so many of the others are just downright disturbing and I'm 100% here for it. I want a collage of these monstrosities.
glad to see other people appreciate how funny fire punch is
Interesting & really funny thanks!
Oh my lovely faith I accepted the good parts of ... Ha... The amount of trauma this 'religion' has caused is unfathomable.
All very white, may we add
maybe it was just a white baby thing, guess we'll never know
Yeah almost like it's european art or something, how strange
Right, and also because Jesus was never a real guy to begin with. He's a greeting card figure that got out of hand and now a bunch of grown adults can't or won't let go.
@@TamaraKane Right. If you google search Superior Brachium of the limbic cortex, you will see a figure of a horned (or thorned) being that looks like it is on a cross. The christ is a metaphor for our consciousness and our ablility to fell emotions and have empathy through the use of our limbic cortex.
And?
The baby probably sold me fent
The downward and contemptuous OMG look on Mary's face, is priceless.
My name has been Dale for 66 years, usually I've been satisfied to be hiding in the shadows except for the occasional Dale Gribble. All of a sudden in the past 2-3 months there has been an explosion of characters named Dale, usually in a slightly pejorative way, sometimes just as a regular person. What's the deal with all the Dales?!
No offense at all meant, but who looks at a baby and is like, “This newborn infant looks like a Dale.” Dale automatically sounds like at least a good 37 years old to me. 😂
@@berniesanderssweetmittens5430 Lol! Funny thing is, when I was a baby my mom and dad took me to my first family reunion. My dad's dad had 7 siblings, so there were tons of cousins, and my parents found out there was already a Dale Greer 2 years older than me! Even better, we've been living in the same city for decades, and I occasionally come across someone who knows my cousin.
Too funny 😂 thanks
painting a baby with a grown man face is such a weirdly specific meme way to depict the lifespan of a relationship
"Fully conscious baby" Lore
The face of the baby Jesus in the painting was often an important nobleman or clergy member or the patron who commissioned the painting in order to show them as a godly person.
Renaissance era A.I. generated babies
“Ask for dale at your local target store”
“Babies that need a prostate exam” I got whiplash from my double take 💀
"Perfect and unchanged"
...I'm not sure that first part came through so well.
When I heard homunculus I immediately thought of Full Metal Alchemist. 😆
The final baby looked like he was saying end my suffering mother 😂