Wednesday, August 6, 2025
HomeEntertainmentArtWhy are babies so ugly in the paintings of the Middle Ages?

Why are babies so ugly in the paintings of the Middle Ages?

Consequently,

Why babies so ugly paintings:

Who is ugly?

We are not talking about any baby. Consequently, Whoever is mainly represented turns out to be the Child Jesus, through a Nativity, a Virgin and Child … Furthermore, except Jesus. Meanwhile, young children and infants are very little present in this period of the history of medieval art which extends over almost ten centuries, until the Renaissance.

-Panel of the master altar of the Chartreuse Saint-Honoré, Thuison-les-Abbeville (Somme): Virgin and Child 1490 why babies so ugly paintings-Panel of the master altar of the Chartreuse Saint-Honoré, Thuison-les-Abbeville (Somme): Virgin and Child 1490
Detail of a panel of the master altar of the Chartreuse Saint-Honoré, in Thuison-les-Abbeville (France), zoom in on the wrinkled baby, of this “virgin and child”, around 1490. Furthermore, © DR

Several elements explain the success of this baby, and not others. Additionally, Furthermore, Infant mortality remains extremely high: a quarter of children die before the age of 1 year during this period. For example, which runs from the 5th to the 15th century. Furthermore, Children occupy between 30 to 40 % of places in cemeteries of the Middle Ages, where they were carefully buried. Therefore, So, if painting represents little anonymous babies little, it is because their life expectancy is weak. Similarly, It is not a question of pretending. Furthermore, in shortcut, that parental attachment is nonexistent, because the burials of children are neat and there are, moreover, many representations of children who died in why babies so ugly paintings art at these eras.

Despite everything. For example, the most famous Stay Jesus, and for good reason: the Church is the main sponsor of works of art. Meanwhile, It is religious authority that imposes its iconographic criteria in the sacred image. Meanwhile, And it is not because God embodied in a child that he was not already divine at his birth. Furthermore, Baby, he already carries the attributes of wisdom – in real life, the features of old age. Meanwhile, This is what we named the Young old man Understand the “extraordinary child” or “old child”.

That baby painted Around 1283 by Duccio di Buoninsegna why babies so ugly paintingsThat baby painted Around 1283 by Duccio di Buoninsegna
Virgin to the Endant of Duccio di Buoninsegna, around 1283, called “La Madone de Crévole”. Furthermore, Bald Jesus. © DR

Hence this profusion of babies with an emerging baldness and a wrinkled face. This type of representation that is both very widespread (there is an Instagram page which lists. all over the world, the vials of ugly babies in painting) and very codified, demonstrates an artistic will, not a technical inability of said pictorial artists. Especially since during Greek antiquity, artists had no trouble representing with mimicry the anatomy of human beings.

Silène why babies so ugly paintingsSilène
“Silène carrying Dionysos Child” (1st-1th century AD): No difficulty in representing cute cute babies at that time. © 2011 Louvre Museum / Thierry Ollivier

Why babies so ugly paintings

We don’t laugh with the symbols

In the Middle Ages. the status of images changes: they take on a sacred character-which, moreover, will create a sacred pataquès between the iconodules, which accept the images of God and use them as a support for prayer, and the iconoclasts, ready to destroy them, fearing that they are dedicated to them the cult devolved to God himself.

At that time. the image took place, as we understand, a strong symbolic load which involves the integration of “educational” symbols for the use of the believer. As the historian Marie-France Morel tells. the hands of the child Jesus represent his divinity, they are often disproportionate, when why babies so ugly paintings his feet are his humanity.

Virgin and child, Berlinghiero Berlinghieri - why babies so ugly paintingsVirgin and child, Berlinghiero Berlinghieri - why babies so ugly paintings
“Virgin and child”, by Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, 1235: Jesus looks elderly. © DR

The representation of the child Jesus obeys theological issues. in particular the concept of “homymculus” – This little man carrying the Spirit of Jesus who implants him in the belly of Mary, even if this conception becomes heretical after the Council of Trent in 1563. In short, Jesus is not a baby: he is much more than that, already! What explains, in parallel, at the same time, the angels can have a cute why babies so ugly paintings cute coil.

mother and child museum of Liverpool why babies so ugly paintingsmother and child museum of Liverpool why babies so ugly paintings
“Mother and child”, from the Italian school, around 1490. Museum of Fine Arts in Liverpool: Jesus looks concerned. © DR

Babies are embellished

We must wait for the Renaissance, the renewed interest in humans, for babies to change in painting. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is interested in the representation of children. He draws them from the hair and chilled. And it is not uncommon. from the 16th century, to meet babies Jesus suckling their mother, even zizi in the air – humanity obliges.

Why a five -year -old child could why babies so ugly paintings not have done this: poorly understood contemporary art!

New knowledge of anatomy even generates a distortion in the representation of babies, suddenly adorned with real chocolate tablets. We think of the baby Jesus overcoming in the canvas of Saint Luke painting the Virgin. the Child, The Maarten van Heemskerck.

muscular baby why babies so ugly paintingsmuscular baby why babies so ugly paintings
“Saint Luke painting the Virgin and the Child”, by Maarten Van Heemskerck dating from 1532. Zoom on the musculature of Jesus. © DR

The 17th. 18th century see the sponsors of paintings Change: portraits of royal children (which we send for a future alliance), children why babies so ugly paintings of the bourgeoisie, all in parallel with the publication of treaties on education, and a new interest in the child in the heart of society. This allows babies to change their heads. Poupons à niges or chic babies of rich people, babies are recovering the hair of the beast. But can we say that they are pretty when we said of those of the Middle Ages that they. were ugly?

Vigée Le Brun why babies so ugly paintingsVigée Le Brun why babies so ugly paintings
“Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France and her children”, by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun Louise-Elisabeth (1787). Ideal baby. © Gérard Blot

The “recent” babies of art history why babies so ugly paintings correspond more to our modern conception of the child. to which we can focus the notions of juvenile purity, or even the importance of childhood in the construction of the individual … As in each era. the values that irrigate society influence the aesthetic tendencies in direct line, and, consequently, determine what is supposed to be beautiful, while showing finger “.

Summer series: Unusual art history. Questioning the history of art makes it possible to understand the era that looks at it. the relationship that society has to art and artists. Here, we try to do it laughing.

Where did the arms of the Venus de Milo go?

Why babies so ugly paintings

Further reading: At the Musée d’Orsay, a Table de Courbet has a facelift before visitorsMeroë Marston Morse, the visionary who made the Polaroid a cultural objectFalse works by Picasso, Klee or Munch seized during the dismantling of a vast traffic in Italy – Rts.chWilliam Paredes, this young Narbonne painter who takes your portraitThe unknown stay of the great Japanese painter Foujita in the Vézère valley during the Great War.

lennox.adams
lennox.adams
Lennox rates public-transit seating comfort nationwide—complete with squeak-decibel charts.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
RELATED ARTICLES

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

- Advertisment -

Most Popular

Recent Comments