rennaissance painters: what is a baby? a small man?
every time i see this post it’s accompanied by a different horrifying painted man baby
In the Detroit Museum of Art there’s a neat room where they have paintings from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries along with plaques explaining the transition in European art from “manbaby” to an actual, somewhat realistic child.
According to those plaques, society’s general feeling about children was that they were sinful, cruel, unchristian things which had to be taught how to act like their betters, the adults. Because of this, the people paying for portraits of their children generally requested that the children be given the appearance of an adult, so that they would be visually associated with being a kind and proper individual. As we progressed out of the Byzantine era people’s opinions changed and the innocence of youth was seen as a desirable thing, so the depiction of children shifted to make them appear more cherubic.
… Though the article covers a broader time period and therefore explains more about how the Medieval period caused society to think up something as weird as a “Manbaby” in the first place.
“My baby is more well-behaved than yours, Bartholomew. Just look at him. He has an eight-pack.”
