

all 22 comments


an overwhelming majority of the paintings on the Tumblr are not renaissance, or are early renaissance paintings. Proportion and space looks wierd in these to the modern eye because space and proportion were not considered important in earlier christian art. For reference as to how this can be, consider Japanese paintings, which often ignore likeness and go for caricature and atmosphere. The purely Christian approach to art is surprisingly similar; only the advent of science and rediscovery of greco-roman cultures changed this.

As jaydelnorte pointed out, babies were hard to paint because they would not sit still and were certainly not widely available as models for drawing or painting. Artists who painted most of these paintings worked in the aristocratic court, where babies were well out of sight, with servants. In the renaissance, it's possible that most baby references came from cadavers, and even these were hard to come by.

As for female nudes, the models used by artists for these purposes weren't pretty aristocratic women. They were most often servants, prostitutes or poor women, often very young. So take a woman still in development, add disease, malnutrition, possible pregnancy etc... models weren't always the picture of bodily perfection.

furthermore, pre-renaissance paintings were meant to be narrative and didactic. They valued clarity of "what is going on" over composition. They also valued color and vibrance to make the paintings stand out. in the German and Flemish paintings represented on the Tumblr page, as well as the Hieronymous Bosch paintings, there was a tradition of putting as much narrative content as possible into the painting. A helpful tool to achieve all this is caricature, so it was actually preferable that characters looked grotesque. It drew attention and told stories. Stories like "THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU SIN, SINNER!"

that last link you posted , correct me if i'm wrong but that's Michelangelo. Michelangelo eschewed women and just used male models with boobs.

TL;DR pre-renaissance paintings don't care about proportion and babies are hard to come by

[–]marmosetohmarmoset[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

But surely they'd seen babies, and even if they couldn't paint them from life must have realized that what they painted looked nothing like a real baby. It just seems so odd because other things in these paintings look quite realistic.


not necessarily. for one thing, a male artist working from the court would be unlikely to see a naked baby (only a clothed or swaddled one). further, the babies in the paintings are posed in ways that babies don't really do, because they were modeled off of children at best. the artists had SEEN babies (plump, small nose-to-chin distance, small) but applying their characteristics to models painted to request was very difficult.

there's also another problem - most of the babies present in the paintings are baby Jesus. the presentation of Jesus as a baby was actually very contentious because he was supposed to appear as the wise beyond his years child of God. an odd-looking middle ground was often chosen.

[–]bookered 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Babies in renaissance panting owe a lot of their look (this is early renaissance, as opposed to "boobs-stuck-on-male-model-syndrome" which persists all the way through mannerism in some parts of Italy) to the style of babies painted by icon painters during the middle ages. Back then it was considered pretty standard to just shrink a normal-sized guy and stick him the the Virgin Mary's lap, which leads to images of babies that we see is disproportionate, with small heads, overly-muscled, with kneecaps and elbows (babies have cartilaginous knees and elbows which ossify later on, the difference in look is subtle, but it registers along with the rest), etc. In some areas artists studied anatomy and the visual vocabulary changed as other artists near them kept up with the change, in others the medieval style continues (go into an eastern orthodox church today, the look is the same).

[–]AllBrockEverything 11 points12 points  (3 children)

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, except to say that I run the Ugly Renaissance Babies tumblr blog, and I'm excited to see it linked here. I'm also totally aware that many/most of the images I post are not actually renaissance-era, but it makes for a catchy name!

[–]marmosetohmarmoset[S] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Oh wow! Your blog is amazing! I think I found it through The Bloggess, and it had me dying of laughter. Very bad for my procrastination problem.

[–]AllBrockEverything 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm glad you like it! The response over the past year has been really awesome, I love being able to make people laugh. Now stop procrastinating and get back to work, bud.

[–]rheingolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seriously?? Oh my god, you are my hero! I love your blog!

[–]kyleclements 15 points16 points  (2 children)

I believe artists from this period often used male models as stand-ins for females, and quite literally just added some boobs to the male figure.

Apparently, the idea of art being an excuse to gawk at naked women hadn't occurred to anyone yet... ;)

[–]POOR_IMPULSE_C0NTROL 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Or it had occurred to them, and they were puritan beyond reason, and so intentionally avoided using incredibly sexy nudes.

[–]alllie -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

But that was Michelangelo. He'd dissected corpses so he had to know what women looked like. Being gay he just didn't like it.


From what I've been told in lectures etc, artists tended to use young men as models for women and would not use models for babies at all (other than to model a face). This was because babies were difficult to work with and women would tend to be busy at home (and those who weren't were probably rich enough not to care).

As for the proportions of the babies, I agree that it's odd that they tend to look like miniature people rather than babies - the proportions are all wrong with arms and legs being too long and slender for a short body. So, again, artists tended to just use adult models and scale them down. But from what I remember, it also apparently made them look more divine, mature, important. Artists were perfectly aware of what babies looked like, but as they probably wouldn't have drawn/painted them while training as an artist so would have no experience of them within art.

Also, the sculpture you linked to was a Michelangelo who only used male models in his work (leading to irrelevant speculation about his sexuality), and it literally was a case of adding breasts to a sculpture of a man. Some say it was because of some sort of male superiority thing, some say it was just a convenience thing.

Just as a note, though, a lot of paintings are erroneously labelled as works of the renaissance when they aren't, which is often the case on that tumblr page. They look more pre-renaissance and middle age, so this was before people were taught explicitly about proportions (there were rules, but they were no Vitruvian man)

TL;DR: Adult models for the faces, and scaled down adults for the bodies because it was 'divine'.

(edit: I forgot to close brackets

[–]ryth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I believe that there is some value to a lot of the comments in this thread, but I also think that the majority of them are downplaying the role that the Mannerist movement had on a lot of painters. In particular the mannerists were more interested in the impact, visual flow, and message of the painting than they were in direct realism. While this wouldn't be the reason for the "weird boobs", it does definitely explain a lot of the features in the babies in the link that you posted. A great example of mannerism that I really love is "Madonna with the Long Neck" by Parmigianio.

The paintings that you linked are from a pretty diverse time period and encompass a lot of different styles, traversing several hundred years.. so there isn't really a "one-size fits all" answer to your question.

[–]kushofi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In addition to the other comments, sometimes artists got the perspective wrong in their paintings giving their subjects the weird body proportions. Also, a lot of the odd body proportions of babies was due to who the baby was supposed to be. For example; Baby Jesus was often painted with adult like features to symbolise his Godliness and wisdom, even as a baby and Cherubs sometimes had adult features as real babies don't look particularly amorous.

On the other hand sometimes sculptors had to create figures that would have looked weird when viewed close up, but, when placed on the outside of a building, above the ground, would look correctly proportioned due to foreshortening For example, if you look at Michelangelo's David closely, David's proportions are also quite odd

[–]hniyazi 2 points3 points  (3 children)

A great question, and nicely addressed by the range of responses. Earlier artists had not yet addressed the naturalism that wowed patrons and spectators in the Renaissance. Some time in the 15th century there was stark transition from flat 2D imagery to images giving the illusion of 3Dimensions in pictorial space. Among scholars there is a lot of debate about how and why thus occurred. Many look to sculptors, both from Flanders and Italy (the most famous being Donatello) and the near classical naturalism of something like his Bronze David (now at the Bargello in Florence).

In painting, the works of the Brothers van Eyck (and particularly Jan van Eyck) are also noteworthy for their astounding naturalism. The earliest depictions of babies that have this appearance of 3D about them can be seen in the "Madonna and Child" images attributed to van Eyck and his school such as the "Lucca Madonna" c.1436. Those interested in an approachable yet scholarly text exploring this theme are recommended to seek Craig Harbison's "Jan Van Eyck - The Play of Realism" - which was revised in 2012. There is a cool interview/podcast with Harbison on Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes at Artinfo for those interested in hearing a bit more.

[–]hammerandanvil 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What a treat! Welcome to Reddit Mr. Niyazi.

[–]hniyazi 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Many thanks. I was quite delighted to find there was an art history subreddit.

[–]hammerandanvil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome. This subreddit is active and populated with interested people. /r/ArtSphere and /r/Museum are also stimulating. /r/AskHistorians is wonderful, as well. I hope you will post links to your blog here for discussion ... or just comment at your leisure. Either way we are all sure to benefit.

[–]cotterpindoozer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In terms of representation of babies (or the infant Christ in particular), the early renaissance was the first time artists began to be interested in portraying the subjects as somewhat realistic and human. Meaning, we start seeing rolls of baby fat, an emotional connection between the mother and child, etc. before the renaissance, that was not valued. Babies were essentially depicted as little men, and the child Jesus more as a static divine icon than a humanized figure. A lot of the paintings on that blog are from this time period, where humanism was emerging, but the more medieval tendencies are also still discernible.

As for the women - I'd state generally that a bulbous woman was the ideal figure in the Italian renaissance. I'd point you to works by Parmigianino whose female figures took this hour glass figure to a notable extreme. He was a mannerist, and was notorious for elongating his figures.

Just as an interesting side note, a large forehead was also considered very fashionable in renaissance Florence in the fifteenth century. Women would purposefully recede their hairlines - and so we see a lot of this depicted in painting as well.

[–]BenWK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Beyond mirroring much of what has been said with regards to Michelangelo's preference for prosthetic legions and the difference of pre-Renaissance concepts of realism, the inclusion of women in the question got me thinking of something I recently read. The 14th century painter and writer Cennino Cennini (pre-Renaissance) set out in his handbook to being a painter his concept of 'the proportions which a perfectly formed man's body should possess'. As he says it: 'take note before you go any further, I will give you the exact proportions of a man. Those of a woman I shall omit, as they are not exact multiples of one another'. Cennini's comments would seem to stem from a Platonic (or certainly classical) vision of MANkind, which centered very much on the divinity of MEN to the exclusion of women (much as Greek democracy centred on men, not on women or slaves - and the greeks concept of higher/Platonic love was that between two men). The Renaissance as such flourished in a Greek derived patriarchy in which Men were the embodiment of divine proportions. Painting continued to reflect this.

[–]blart_history -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That is a Michelangelo sculpture. As observed on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he basically always made women as men-with-boobs-stuck-on. Some believe it was because he didn't have access to female models, but most would say he was homosexual and didn't know what a naked woman looked like.

[–]jaydelnorte -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Artists work from live models. Babies don't sit still and often they are in poses or doing things in paintings they don't do in real life. It is much more difficult to be an "illustrator" or to create something that doesn't exist than to paint what you see. Having no photos for reference, painting a baby scowling will be very difficult as there is no way to make a baby hold a scowling pose or to even glimpse one. This will lead to the awkward depiction. Also sometimes paintings dont work out and sometimes its harder to fix something than to start over but maybe you need money or there is a deadline. Also some of the visual memes of that time were strange to begin with. Just my thoughts as a painter.