knightly creative person are not known for their life - like accuracy . They doodledkiller bunniesin the margins of their manuscripts and painted lions asgoofy , make a face feline . But if you ’ve ever found yourself chuckling at the angry serviceman - heads on human child in medievalart , the gag is in reality on you : These painterswantedthebabiesto look likeBoomers .
Voxspoke toMatthew Averett , an artistic production history professor at Creighton University , to find out why this trend toward designedly old - look babies abound during the Middle Ages — and what caused the shift during the Renaissance toward the cherubic face we recognize as babies .
This homuncular , grownup - looking child Jesus became the standard for all nestling , an exemplar that stupefy in the Middle Ages because artist at the sentence had , accord to Averett , a “ lack of interest in realism , and they cut more toward expressionist conventions . ”
The horrible baby movement fade during theRenaissance , when artists rediscover realism and applied scientific precision to their figurative body of work . Non - spiritual art also wave at the meter as the rising middle and upper classes could afford portraits of their category phallus . The wealthy patrons desire theatrical of their darling children that reflected well on the parent , with little boys and girls who were cute — not Benjamin Button - esque . depiction of babies shifted away from the hyper - stylized homuncular and never looked back .
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A version of this account was published in 2019 ; it has been updated for 2024 .
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