Since Christmas is clearly the most magical time of year, and since it is clearly all about memorializing the birth of Jesus Christ, in the week leading up to the big day I have decided to devote myself to the celebration of the birthday of the number two man upstairs (God is number one, right? Or are they one entity, thus making them both number one? That would be kind of lame, but I can't remember if that's accurate. Or are they simultaneously one entity and separate entities? That would be even more lame, in a way, but also intriguing. Anyway, I must move on...). I will do so by selecting choice moments from Jesus' life that have been depicted skillfully in art and sharing them with you, my audience of perhaps a dozen. The celebration will culminate on Christmas day, when I will unveil a birthday paean that hopefully does justice to JC; a fellow I consider affectionately as psychedelic, not too into experimentation, wacky, not always concerned with looking his best, sometimes able to fly and stuff, and, finally, someone who just does not give a hoot what other people might think, among other things.
We will start at the beginning: JC, like most of us, was once a baby. I think it is safe to say that he is the most painted baby in history; by which I mean that loads of artists painted loads of pictures of him, not that people literally came up to him and applied paint to his person while he was an infant. That would have been nuts. But hey, it was the Dark Ages or something, maybe that was cool then. People did tons of weird stuff back in the day: get the plague, forget how to read and write, serfdom. If you inserted "applying paint to babies" into that list, it probably wouldn't seem very strange.
Now that that has been cleared up, behold baby Jesus, in painted form:
(Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child with Angels, 1340; tempera on panel; Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi.)
As most of you probably know, baby JC's later life would get somewhat tough, unfortunately. What those of you untrained in the discipline of Art History probably do not know is that Lorenzetti presaged this hardship in his particular depiction of the young second-in-command of the Armies of Floating Cloud Land. Take a closer look at a detail of Lorenzetti's painting:
Oh Jesus, that's a high forehead. You are just born and already your ginger locks are retreating frantically; they are not even making a pretension of holding the (hair) line. If that's not an omen that one is going to be crucified in thirty-three years exactly, I don't know what is. What a cruel, cruel world. But even in the face of this injustice, he's such a good guy: He's not mad at ya, Ma. Or is he? He might be mad. Do babies even have emotions? It's hard to tell.
Check back for Day II of JC's Banging Birthday Week tomorrow, December 19th.
(Published originally on December 18th, 2011.)
We will start at the beginning: JC, like most of us, was once a baby. I think it is safe to say that he is the most painted baby in history; by which I mean that loads of artists painted loads of pictures of him, not that people literally came up to him and applied paint to his person while he was an infant. That would have been nuts. But hey, it was the Dark Ages or something, maybe that was cool then. People did tons of weird stuff back in the day: get the plague, forget how to read and write, serfdom. If you inserted "applying paint to babies" into that list, it probably wouldn't seem very strange.
Now that that has been cleared up, behold baby Jesus, in painted form:
(Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child with Angels, 1340; tempera on panel; Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi.)
As most of you probably know, baby JC's later life would get somewhat tough, unfortunately. What those of you untrained in the discipline of Art History probably do not know is that Lorenzetti presaged this hardship in his particular depiction of the young second-in-command of the Armies of Floating Cloud Land. Take a closer look at a detail of Lorenzetti's painting:
Oh Jesus, that's a high forehead. You are just born and already your ginger locks are retreating frantically; they are not even making a pretension of holding the (hair) line. If that's not an omen that one is going to be crucified in thirty-three years exactly, I don't know what is. What a cruel, cruel world. But even in the face of this injustice, he's such a good guy: He's not mad at ya, Ma. Or is he? He might be mad. Do babies even have emotions? It's hard to tell.
Check back for Day II of JC's Banging Birthday Week tomorrow, December 19th.
(Published originally on December 18th, 2011.)
No comments:
Post a Comment