1
00:00:03,920 --> 00:00:07,280
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm here to see the baby. Oh you mean

2
00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:11,720
Speaker 1: the child whose birth was foretold in the stars. Uh, well, yeah,

3
00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:14,000
Speaker 1: there is this an angel that told me to come.

4
00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:17,119
Speaker 1: An angel. Yeah, a big winged fella made out of

5
00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:20,120
Speaker 1: fire and light and all these like spinning wheels and stuff.

6
00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:24,240
Speaker 1: Oh of course, yes, Well step right this way. Just

7
00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:27,920
Speaker 1: we should warn you be prepared. Oh, no, worries. I've

8
00:00:28,120 --> 00:00:30,360
Speaker 1: been around babies before, I got two of my own.

9
00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:34,360
Speaker 1: I'll keep quiet. No, no, no, you don't understand. This

10
00:00:34,440 --> 00:00:39,160
Speaker 1: is a special infant. It looks different. Oh ugly baby.

11
00:00:39,320 --> 00:00:41,240
Speaker 1: Don't worry. I got it. I know how to respond,

12
00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:43,440
Speaker 1: what to say, what not to say. I don't think

13
00:00:43,479 --> 00:00:46,640
Speaker 1: you do, know, my friend, this baby is unlike anything

14
00:00:46,720 --> 00:00:49,600
Speaker 1: I've seen before in my travels in the far East

15
00:00:49,960 --> 00:00:55,000
Speaker 1: to the far West. It is unusual. Well, now I

16
00:00:55,440 --> 00:00:58,160
Speaker 1: really want to see this baby. Let's do this. Well,

17
00:00:58,240 --> 00:01:01,920
Speaker 1: you should take a moment to prepare. So Jesus, yes

18
00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:06,160
Speaker 1: that is his name. He looks like a tiny old man,

19
00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:08,760
Speaker 1: and not in the way that he's supposed to look

20
00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:11,679
Speaker 1: like a tiny old man. He looks like a miniature

21
00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:15,960
Speaker 1: old man with are those abs? Yes they are, And

22
00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:18,959
Speaker 1: we're all a bit confused about the blonde hair like

23
00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:21,640
Speaker 1: I'm only now noticing that there's a disc of cosmic

24
00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:25,080
Speaker 1: radiance surrounding his head because I'm distracted by the fact

25
00:01:25,120 --> 00:01:29,360
Speaker 1: that he looks like a miniature old man with with muscles. Strange,

26
00:01:29,440 --> 00:01:40,760
Speaker 1: isn't it. Oh, he's looking this way. Welcome to Stuff

27
00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:49,800
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

28
00:01:49,920 --> 00:01:51,560
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

29
00:01:51,640 --> 00:01:54,520
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Hey, it being

30
00:01:54,600 --> 00:01:58,600
Speaker 1: right around the Christmas season for for these Christmas celebrating

31
00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:01,640
Speaker 1: cultures all over the place, that we should ask you

32
00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:04,680
Speaker 1: to do a little thought experiment going through the history

33
00:02:04,880 --> 00:02:08,519
Speaker 1: of of art in depiction of the Christian Nativity scene.

34
00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:12,120
Speaker 1: And maybe Jesus, imagine you're one of those shepherds or

35
00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 1: wise men or farm animals or other assembled masses on

36
00:02:16,040 --> 00:02:19,400
Speaker 1: the premises in the Nativity scene. So you're there in

37
00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:23,840
Speaker 1: the barn and the major and there's the baby. But

38
00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:29,320
Speaker 1: the baby doesn't quite look right, indeed, and it doesn't

39
00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:32,040
Speaker 1: look right in a way that is is quite unsettling.

40
00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:35,959
Speaker 1: It looks like a like a tiny adult. Yeah, Mary

41
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,200
Speaker 1: is there. Joseph's looking on Sometimes depending on the painting,

42
00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:41,800
Speaker 1: and she's got the baby in her arms or on

43
00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:45,880
Speaker 1: her lap, or or in the manger. But no matter what,

44
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:50,200
Speaker 1: the baby kind of looks like Alan Arkin. Yeah, the

45
00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:54,440
Speaker 1: christ Child often does in some of these these paintings

46
00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:57,360
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be discussing here today, or Philip Seymour Hoffman,

47
00:02:57,840 --> 00:02:59,760
Speaker 1: a little bit of Philip sy Moore Hoffman. Sometimes they

48
00:02:59,800 --> 00:03:03,000
Speaker 1: catch a little bit of Vladimir Putin in there. You've

49
00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:05,560
Speaker 1: got a baby putin sometimes, or sometimes the christ Child

50
00:03:05,639 --> 00:03:09,800
Speaker 1: looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, yeah, this, uh, this is

51
00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:12,680
Speaker 1: the case if if you look at a lot of

52
00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:16,480
Speaker 1: medieval art and even early Renaissance art, you'll see these

53
00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:19,720
Speaker 1: depictions of the Christ Child that are a little jarring,

54
00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,520
Speaker 1: especially if you're used to more modern interpretations of a

55
00:03:23,600 --> 00:03:26,359
Speaker 1: baby in a manger, and and that includes like actual

56
00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:31,400
Speaker 1: live Nativity scenes where you have an actual infant standing

57
00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:33,920
Speaker 1: in for the christ Child. This is something that I

58
00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:36,240
Speaker 1: imagine a number of our listeners out there have picked

59
00:03:36,320 --> 00:03:40,320
Speaker 1: up on of late, because there are these articles, these

60
00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,000
Speaker 1: sort of galleries that make the rounds on social media,

61
00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:48,839
Speaker 1: often with titles like ugly Renaissance Babies or Renaissance um

62
00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:51,600
Speaker 1: babies and Renaissance paintings that can't even I think that

63
00:03:51,760 --> 00:03:54,200
Speaker 1: was a title of one that gave me a chuckle

64
00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:56,880
Speaker 1: a while back. Roll will just be this very yeah,

65
00:03:56,960 --> 00:04:00,640
Speaker 1: very buzzfeedy, very clicky, and it'll be this just barrage

66
00:04:00,760 --> 00:04:05,040
Speaker 1: of indeed strange looking babies. Now, babies are strange looking anyway,

67
00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:07,160
Speaker 1: but on top of that, you do have all of

68
00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:14,000
Speaker 1: these like odd poses, these odd facial expressions, the odd

69
00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:19,279
Speaker 1: just morphology of the christ child, sometimes involving like what

70
00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:23,720
Speaker 1: appears to be male pattern baldness, or muscles like adults,

71
00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:27,600
Speaker 1: muscles like something out of a statue of Apollo, and

72
00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:32,800
Speaker 1: it's it's a little confusing, especially considering that's you know,

73
00:04:32,839 --> 00:04:37,080
Speaker 1: sometimes these are in older medieval works where there's a

74
00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:39,880
Speaker 1: certain abstraction to the to just how that the human

75
00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:44,919
Speaker 1: form itself is displayed. But other times it's clearly a

76
00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:48,920
Speaker 1: work of of high craftsmanship, of high artistry. And yet

77
00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:52,280
Speaker 1: the baby the center of the picture, that really the

78
00:04:52,839 --> 00:04:58,080
Speaker 1: most important figure in in Christian traditions. There's something off

79
00:04:58,120 --> 00:05:01,200
Speaker 1: about it, and if really begin to think about it

80
00:05:01,200 --> 00:05:04,400
Speaker 1: and try to tease it apart, it's it's initially difficult

81
00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:06,680
Speaker 1: to figure out why why would this one thing be

82
00:05:06,800 --> 00:05:10,279
Speaker 1: so off? Yeah, So we wanted to talk today about

83
00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:15,039
Speaker 1: the artistic traditions of depicting the Christ Child, specifically the

84
00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:18,920
Speaker 1: baby in the manger, but also babies in general throughout

85
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:23,520
Speaker 1: medieval art and Renaissance art. Anybody who would be having

86
00:05:23,640 --> 00:05:26,760
Speaker 1: occasion to draw the Nativity or to draw the Virgin

87
00:05:26,839 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 1: Mary and the in the Christ Child in her arms. Uh,

88
00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:33,280
Speaker 1: And why so often you get a little odd aliens

89
00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:36,160
Speaker 1: with wide eyes gazing up to the mother ship, or

90
00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:41,039
Speaker 1: why you get creepy old men with like long slender limbs,

91
00:05:41,640 --> 00:05:44,240
Speaker 1: or babies that seem to be maybe growing a five

92
00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:47,359
Speaker 1: o'clock shadow. Some of these even remind me of the

93
00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:50,919
Speaker 1: Island of Dr Moreau, the version with Marlon Brando. Um,

94
00:05:51,279 --> 00:05:53,880
Speaker 1: if you recall, he had what would later become known

95
00:05:53,920 --> 00:05:57,200
Speaker 1: as a mini me, and some of the Christ Child

96
00:05:57,240 --> 00:06:00,320
Speaker 1: that you encounter in uh, in medieval art have that

97
00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:04,040
Speaker 1: kind of appearance. Yeah. And so what we're picking up

98
00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:08,320
Speaker 1: on is our instinctual ideas about what babies are supposed

99
00:06:08,320 --> 00:06:10,200
Speaker 1: to look like. And we we've talked about this in

100
00:06:10,320 --> 00:06:13,120
Speaker 1: recent episodes. Actually, we talked about it in our Cuteness

101
00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:16,920
Speaker 1: and Monstrosity episode back in October um. But yeah, there

102
00:06:16,920 --> 00:06:19,720
Speaker 1: are these basic features that you see as the most

103
00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:23,840
Speaker 1: common morphology is associated with babies. And it's been hypothesized

104
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:27,920
Speaker 1: that certain types of features sort of set off our

105
00:06:27,960 --> 00:06:31,720
Speaker 1: cuteness detectors, that like, we see a creature of a

106
00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:35,360
Speaker 1: certain kind of shape and it makes us go, ah,

107
00:06:35,560 --> 00:06:38,320
Speaker 1: I want to take care of that thing. And so

108
00:06:38,400 --> 00:06:40,560
Speaker 1: some of these commonly understood shapes would be like a

109
00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:45,160
Speaker 1: large head and like a large forehead, or what's known

110
00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:49,599
Speaker 1: as the predominance of the brain capsule, large low lying eyes,

111
00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:51,760
Speaker 1: so the eyes are sort of low set on the

112
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:57,080
Speaker 1: face and their big bulging cheeks, short, thick, kind of

113
00:06:57,120 --> 00:07:02,880
Speaker 1: stubby arms and legs, a springy or elastic consistency. So

114
00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:05,600
Speaker 1: something that looks kind of soft and maybe not covered

115
00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:10,200
Speaker 1: in really hard muscles and clumsy movements is the final one.

116
00:07:10,240 --> 00:07:12,480
Speaker 1: I guess that would come through more in in real

117
00:07:12,520 --> 00:07:15,680
Speaker 1: life movement, though you can sometimes communicate grace or clumsiness

118
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:18,760
Speaker 1: in poses, and a lot of these Baby Jesus Is

119
00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:22,600
Speaker 1: in these paintings do appear very graceful in their movements. Yeah,

120
00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:25,960
Speaker 1: you see the sort of a regal demeanor. Sometimes they're

121
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:30,480
Speaker 1: brandishing a scepter or or a parrot. Uh. And then

122
00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:32,560
Speaker 1: on top of that, many of these features that we've

123
00:07:32,600 --> 00:07:35,760
Speaker 1: already touched on, they look like miniature adult humans in

124
00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:39,720
Speaker 1: their proportioned that way, slender arms and legs, or the

125
00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:42,080
Speaker 1: the baby has appeared appears to have what it may

126
00:07:42,080 --> 00:07:47,800
Speaker 1: be male pattern baldness, painfully thin or overly muscular, and

127
00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:51,680
Speaker 1: like some of these are seriously muscularity. Oh yeah, like

128
00:07:51,680 --> 00:07:54,600
Speaker 1: like power lifter muscular. You look at them, and you you,

129
00:07:54,600 --> 00:07:57,120
Speaker 1: you may immediately ask did they ever see a baby?

130
00:07:57,160 --> 00:07:59,240
Speaker 1: Did they know what a baby looked like? You mean

131
00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:02,840
Speaker 1: the artist? Did they just say? Well, I guess it

132
00:08:02,920 --> 00:08:05,720
Speaker 1: was like a smaller version of Michael Angelo's David. That's

133
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,440
Speaker 1: clearly what an infant would consist of. So what was

134
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:12,320
Speaker 1: causing all of these painters and sculptors and people to

135
00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:17,720
Speaker 1: represent babies in a way that so thoroughly violates our

136
00:08:17,760 --> 00:08:21,640
Speaker 1: instinctual categories of what babies look like and how they're shaped.

137
00:08:22,040 --> 00:08:25,119
Speaker 1: Well that is the discussion for today, and it's really

138
00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:28,520
Speaker 1: it's really I think it's a surprisingly broad discussion because

139
00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:31,880
Speaker 1: it's we're gonna end up drawing in not only art

140
00:08:31,960 --> 00:08:35,400
Speaker 1: history and medieval history, but also a fair amount of

141
00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:40,600
Speaker 1: Christian theology, uh scientific attempts to understand what's happening with

142
00:08:40,760 --> 00:08:44,280
Speaker 1: human reproduction. It's one of these excellent topics where you

143
00:08:44,320 --> 00:08:48,800
Speaker 1: have just this convergence of several different disciplines and hopefully

144
00:08:48,840 --> 00:08:50,880
Speaker 1: that in the end this is going to be an

145
00:08:50,920 --> 00:08:54,840
Speaker 1: episode that alchemist and biologist alike can get into. Christians

146
00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:58,920
Speaker 1: and non Christians, art historians and precious moments figuring collectors.

147
00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:02,520
Speaker 1: You're all going to be uh united in this exploration

148
00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:06,360
Speaker 1: of weird baby Jesus is in art? All right, well,

149
00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:07,960
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take a quick break and

150
00:09:07,960 --> 00:09:10,720
Speaker 1: when we come back we will explore this question further.

151
00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:15,800
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So before we go in any further,

152
00:09:15,880 --> 00:09:18,320
Speaker 1: let's just talk about the time frame here. We are

153
00:09:18,400 --> 00:09:23,560
Speaker 1: largely talking about a popular style within medieval European artistic

154
00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:27,920
Speaker 1: traditions that give way to more realistic depictions of children

155
00:09:27,960 --> 00:09:30,760
Speaker 1: and the Christ child during the Renaissance, but not always

156
00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:35,720
Speaker 1: perfectly realistic. So I would say, you can correct me

157
00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:38,240
Speaker 1: if you disagree, but the main thing we see is

158
00:09:38,679 --> 00:09:42,200
Speaker 1: in the medieval period you're going to have babies and

159
00:09:42,400 --> 00:09:46,000
Speaker 1: baby Jesus is that don't look anything like babies look

160
00:09:46,080 --> 00:09:49,679
Speaker 1: like creepy old men or look like aliens, and then

161
00:09:49,760 --> 00:09:52,200
Speaker 1: going into the Renaissance, you're going to get things that

162
00:09:52,280 --> 00:09:56,160
Speaker 1: start to look a little bit more realistic and less

163
00:09:56,200 --> 00:10:00,160
Speaker 1: like strange aliens and creepy old men, but more just

164
00:10:00,200 --> 00:10:04,599
Speaker 1: sort of like super muscular nude babies. Yeah, it's a

165
00:10:04,679 --> 00:10:08,520
Speaker 1: it's a gradual process, this uh, this transformation that takes

166
00:10:08,520 --> 00:10:10,959
Speaker 1: hold over over the Christ Child in art, and it's

167
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:13,640
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. There's not like a firm timeline across

168
00:10:13,640 --> 00:10:16,600
Speaker 1: all areas and all artists. It is. It is a

169
00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:21,040
Speaker 1: shift in artistic traditions, and therefore it's not going to happen. Um,

170
00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:24,000
Speaker 1: you know, like clockwork. But speaking of clockwork, just to

171
00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:26,800
Speaker 1: assign rough boundaries to these time periods, the Middle Ages

172
00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:29,840
Speaker 1: are generally said to stretch from the fifth century to

173
00:10:29,920 --> 00:10:33,199
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century, from the fall of the Western Roman

174
00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:36,439
Speaker 1: Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance. And the Renaissance

175
00:10:36,679 --> 00:10:40,480
Speaker 1: begins in Florence, Italy in the fourteenth century and kind

176
00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:44,959
Speaker 1: of extends out from there. But as phil Edwards put

177
00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:47,080
Speaker 1: it in a Vox article that he wrote, well, why

178
00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:49,800
Speaker 1: babies and medieval paintings look like ugly old men? He

179
00:10:49,840 --> 00:10:53,440
Speaker 1: says that there there are holes in the Renaissance. Uh,

180
00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:55,720
Speaker 1: And I think this jives with our modern experience of

181
00:10:55,760 --> 00:10:58,480
Speaker 1: creative trends, right, Like, the Renaissance is not gonna pick

182
00:10:58,559 --> 00:11:02,240
Speaker 1: up everywhere at once. Uh, It's going to pick up

183
00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:06,080
Speaker 1: in certain areas, certain places that are perhaps more progressive,

184
00:11:06,400 --> 00:11:08,960
Speaker 1: and then it's going to steadily leak into these other

185
00:11:09,080 --> 00:11:12,800
Speaker 1: portions of Europe. Well, things don't pick up everywhere at

186
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:15,560
Speaker 1: once now on Earth, and we have the Internet. I mean,

187
00:11:15,679 --> 00:11:17,719
Speaker 1: they didn't have anything like the Internet. And then so

188
00:11:17,920 --> 00:11:20,600
Speaker 1: if you're if you're talking about expansion of learning and

189
00:11:20,679 --> 00:11:24,880
Speaker 1: techniques and artistic styles changing, yeah, it's gonna take hundreds

190
00:11:24,880 --> 00:11:27,520
Speaker 1: of years. Yeah. For instance, we have electronic music now

191
00:11:27,520 --> 00:11:29,400
Speaker 1: and we've had it for decades, and yet I'm still

192
00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:33,480
Speaker 1: hearing classical scores from motion pictures. It's disgusting. What's up

193
00:11:33,520 --> 00:11:36,840
Speaker 1: with that? So you just want to Windy Carlos everything

194
00:11:36,880 --> 00:11:42,280
Speaker 1: into the future, Tangerine Dream, Windy Carlos Um. Uh, that

195
00:11:42,400 --> 00:11:44,559
Speaker 1: that's what I want in all of my films. Anything

196
00:11:44,640 --> 00:11:47,360
Speaker 1: less is disappointing. Okay, So we're gonna look at a

197
00:11:47,360 --> 00:11:50,480
Speaker 1: few examples of paintings. Well, it's it's gonna be hard

198
00:11:50,520 --> 00:11:52,079
Speaker 1: to look at them during the podcast, I guess, But

199
00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:54,720
Speaker 1: I'm gonna create an accompanying page It's Stuff to Blow

200
00:11:54,720 --> 00:11:57,720
Speaker 1: your Mind dot Com that includes many of the paintings

201
00:11:57,720 --> 00:12:00,920
Speaker 1: were discussing here today. Okay, so can get an idea

202
00:12:01,040 --> 00:12:02,920
Speaker 1: about what we're talking about here? Well, should we at

203
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:05,200
Speaker 1: least try to describe a couple of them? Sure, let's

204
00:12:05,200 --> 00:12:08,000
Speaker 1: do it. So the first one we're gonna talk about

205
00:12:08,160 --> 00:12:11,800
Speaker 1: is from twelve thirty, so this is thoroughly medieval period

206
00:12:11,880 --> 00:12:15,800
Speaker 1: before before the Renaissance. Yeah. And the artist is one

207
00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:20,480
Speaker 1: barone barreling here, and it's titled Madonna and Child, and

208
00:12:20,559 --> 00:12:23,839
Speaker 1: it is a picture of the Madonna, the Virgin Mary,

209
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:27,559
Speaker 1: and the Christ Child. I'd say they both look like aliens.

210
00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:32,959
Speaker 1: They have extremely extremely elongated faces with a very very

211
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:37,320
Speaker 1: long noses, um like not noses as it not long

212
00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:39,679
Speaker 1: as in poking out from the face, but extending way

213
00:12:39,720 --> 00:12:44,559
Speaker 1: way down along the length of the face. Yeah. It has, uh,

214
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:47,679
Speaker 1: it has what you would probably call like Byzantine aesthetics

215
00:12:47,720 --> 00:12:49,760
Speaker 1: to it. And the child, I thought the child kind

216
00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:52,920
Speaker 1: of looks like Peter Capaldi or perhaps Harold Ramos. I

217
00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:56,640
Speaker 1: sort of see a an art Garfunkle from Metal Luna.

218
00:12:56,760 --> 00:12:59,760
Speaker 1: You know the planet Exeter is from in this island Earth?

219
00:12:59,800 --> 00:13:02,200
Speaker 1: And why is he holding a stick of dynamite? Is

220
00:13:02,200 --> 00:13:04,400
Speaker 1: that a scepter or a skirt supposed to be accepter?

221
00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:07,640
Speaker 1: The child does have a very regal air to them.

222
00:13:07,760 --> 00:13:10,040
Speaker 1: This is this is a child that is probably going

223
00:13:10,080 --> 00:13:11,880
Speaker 1: a Christ child that is going to speak to you

224
00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:14,040
Speaker 1: as an adult, or at least that's what you get

225
00:13:14,320 --> 00:13:17,040
Speaker 1: from this this particular image and send you instructions for

226
00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:21,720
Speaker 1: an interocitory. Now the next image, I'm still trying to

227
00:13:21,720 --> 00:13:25,120
Speaker 1: track down the the actual time and artist on, but

228
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:26,560
Speaker 1: I'll try and include it on the page and then

229
00:13:26,600 --> 00:13:28,559
Speaker 1: you can refer back to it. But in this one,

230
00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:34,160
Speaker 1: we see another sort of alien looking Serene Mary, this

231
00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:38,000
Speaker 1: time with this kind of halo behind her head, and

232
00:13:38,080 --> 00:13:40,800
Speaker 1: she is holding a christ child but also has a

233
00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:44,599
Speaker 1: halo around his head. Mary looks like the alien for

234
00:13:44,800 --> 00:13:47,320
Speaker 1: Mac and me, and the baby just is straight up.

235
00:13:47,400 --> 00:13:51,719
Speaker 1: David Gergan, can you can you describe who David Gergen is?

236
00:13:51,800 --> 00:13:55,280
Speaker 1: David Gergan, He's an American political consultant. I think he

237
00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:58,600
Speaker 1: worked for Nixon and for Bill Clinton maybe, but yeah,

238
00:13:58,640 --> 00:14:01,800
Speaker 1: he's just gotta he got a kind of distinctive face,

239
00:14:01,880 --> 00:14:04,400
Speaker 1: and the baby looks like him. Yes, a very mature

240
00:14:04,480 --> 00:14:08,160
Speaker 1: face to say the least. Now, the next image we're

241
00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:10,360
Speaker 1: gonna discuss. This is the one that really captured me

242
00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:13,280
Speaker 1: the most for a number of reasons. It's a work

243
00:14:13,640 --> 00:14:19,480
Speaker 1: by the Dutch master Martin van Himskrek, and this guy

244
00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:23,640
Speaker 1: live through fift seventy four. So this is this is

245
00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:27,400
Speaker 1: the This is very much an early Renaissance guy here

246
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:31,480
Speaker 1: with with with clear early Renaissance artistic skills like it

247
00:14:31,560 --> 00:14:35,560
Speaker 1: is a beautiful painting titled St. St. Luke Painting the Virgin.

248
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:39,360
Speaker 1: It is a depiction of of a sort of a

249
00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:42,680
Speaker 1: legendary tale that takes hold in his in his repeated

250
00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:46,760
Speaker 1: numerous times and artistic traditions, in which the wine which Luke,

251
00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:51,600
Speaker 1: the biblical Luke paints picked a painting of Mary and

252
00:14:51,680 --> 00:14:53,760
Speaker 1: the Christ Child. Is this supposed to be the author

253
00:14:53,800 --> 00:14:57,200
Speaker 1: of the Gospel of Luke. Yes. One thing you will

254
00:14:57,200 --> 00:14:59,840
Speaker 1: immediately notice once you start getting into the Renaissance period

255
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:04,160
Speaker 1: paintings is that they look not exactly realistic, but much

256
00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:07,920
Speaker 1: much more realistic than the medieval paintings. Robert I was

257
00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:10,600
Speaker 1: making this comparison earlier and I wonder what you've been

258
00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:14,880
Speaker 1: thinking about it. When I see medieval European artwork, I

259
00:15:14,960 --> 00:15:20,400
Speaker 1: often think of it as being somewhat similar to modern

260
00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:25,200
Speaker 1: political cartoons, and that there's really no effort to achieve

261
00:15:25,320 --> 00:15:27,800
Speaker 1: realism of any kind. You're not trying to render a

262
00:15:27,800 --> 00:15:31,520
Speaker 1: photo realistic person or get the details and proportions of

263
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:35,440
Speaker 1: the human body right. People have sort of exaggerated features

264
00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:39,160
Speaker 1: that almost look as if they are designed to indicate

265
00:15:39,280 --> 00:15:43,120
Speaker 1: certain symbolic things about the people. And that I get

266
00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:46,920
Speaker 1: that feeling, because like in political cartoons, people aren't really

267
00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:50,840
Speaker 1: meant to literally embody people, but usually embody a concept.

268
00:15:50,960 --> 00:15:53,560
Speaker 1: So like in a political cartoon, you'd have like a

269
00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:56,040
Speaker 1: guy in a suit with like a you know, like

270
00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:59,040
Speaker 1: a big crazy looking face, and he's he's just got

271
00:15:59,040 --> 00:16:03,080
Speaker 1: a label on him that says like taxes, And medieval

272
00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:05,360
Speaker 1: artwork seems a lot like that to me, Like a

273
00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:09,680
Speaker 1: character depicted often seems to embody a virtue or embody

274
00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:14,000
Speaker 1: a sin, or embody some other kind of abstract idea. Yeah.

275
00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:16,600
Speaker 1: I thought about this a lot when we were reading

276
00:16:16,640 --> 00:16:19,600
Speaker 1: this is it relates to monstrosity because we see so

277
00:16:19,600 --> 00:16:24,520
Speaker 1: many wonderful monstrosities in medieval artistic traditions, and sometimes they

278
00:16:24,880 --> 00:16:27,640
Speaker 1: involve Christ as well. There's this I was showing you

279
00:16:27,640 --> 00:16:29,280
Speaker 1: a few of these images before we went in here.

280
00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:33,440
Speaker 1: But you have these occasional depictions either of Christ with

281
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:38,280
Speaker 1: three faces or three heads, or depictions of the Holy Trinity,

282
00:16:38,480 --> 00:16:41,640
Speaker 1: the idea that you have God uh and Jesus and

283
00:16:41,640 --> 00:16:45,080
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit always one united thing. You have it

284
00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:47,960
Speaker 1: displayed as a three headed sort of a three headed

285
00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:51,680
Speaker 1: Angel or a three headed Christ. And if you look

286
00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:54,600
Speaker 1: at this, certainly from her modern perspective, it seems a

287
00:16:54,640 --> 00:16:59,120
Speaker 1: little weird. It seems potentially blasphemous. Uh. And yet and

288
00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:01,760
Speaker 1: yet you have to put yourself in the mind of

289
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:07,760
Speaker 1: someone trying to convey a complex theological um h model

290
00:17:08,359 --> 00:17:11,879
Speaker 1: to someone using only visuals. How would you do that?

291
00:17:11,920 --> 00:17:14,720
Speaker 1: Why you just draw Christ with three faces? Yeah, I

292
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:16,520
Speaker 1: think that's a good point. There's like another way in

293
00:17:16,520 --> 00:17:19,679
Speaker 1: which we see that. Apparently realism did not seem to

294
00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:24,720
Speaker 1: be a highly prized aspect of of representation of people

295
00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:28,439
Speaker 1: in medieval artworks, in medieval European artworks, which brings us

296
00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:32,440
Speaker 1: back to this this painting by Martin von Helmskirk, which

297
00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:36,840
Speaker 1: is highly detailed. It is a. It is a beautiful image.

298
00:17:36,840 --> 00:17:39,040
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to definitely look at this on the

299
00:17:39,480 --> 00:17:42,919
Speaker 1: page that I build. But at the same time, if

300
00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:45,080
Speaker 1: we we're gonna compare it to two other things like

301
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:48,040
Speaker 1: what this makes me think about and images like this

302
00:17:48,160 --> 00:17:51,159
Speaker 1: makes me think about our scenes and movies that are

303
00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:55,159
Speaker 1: so well shot, so like insanely shot that it throws

304
00:17:55,160 --> 00:17:58,520
Speaker 1: you out of the viewing experience. Um, maybe it will

305
00:17:58,520 --> 00:18:01,440
Speaker 1: be some experimental director or some sort of shot where

306
00:18:01,440 --> 00:18:04,520
Speaker 1: they had to digitally remove the you know, the camera

307
00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:06,679
Speaker 1: or the set to make it work, where you're just

308
00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:08,920
Speaker 1: thrown out of the movie because you're thinking, Wow, how

309
00:18:08,920 --> 00:18:12,000
Speaker 1: did they shoot this? This is just a technical marvel?

310
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:13,760
Speaker 1: And then you don't you're not even paying attention to

311
00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:15,600
Speaker 1: what the characters are doing. Yeah, you can think about

312
00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:18,159
Speaker 1: that in multiple directions. I don't love movies with a

313
00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:20,720
Speaker 1: lot of c g I action in them because I

314
00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:23,480
Speaker 1: I stop, it stops feeling real to me. But you

315
00:18:23,480 --> 00:18:25,200
Speaker 1: can go in the other direction. You don't even have

316
00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:26,520
Speaker 1: to use a lot of c g I. You might

317
00:18:26,520 --> 00:18:30,160
Speaker 1: think about like Terrence Malick films or something where uh,

318
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:33,119
Speaker 1: there's just gonna be a whole lot of extremely beautiful

319
00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:37,840
Speaker 1: kind of perfect photography in them, and that can sometimes

320
00:18:37,920 --> 00:18:41,280
Speaker 1: tend to take you out of the narrative because you

321
00:18:41,359 --> 00:18:43,560
Speaker 1: just sort of like zone out looking at it and

322
00:18:43,560 --> 00:18:46,679
Speaker 1: then sometimes thinking critically about it, like wow that you

323
00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:49,280
Speaker 1: know what, what were the what were they doing with

324
00:18:49,320 --> 00:18:52,760
Speaker 1: this shot? I have the same experience with with super

325
00:18:52,800 --> 00:18:55,040
Speaker 1: long shots in a film, like there seems to be

326
00:18:55,080 --> 00:18:58,679
Speaker 1: a cut off where where a long shot ceases to

327
00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:01,040
Speaker 1: be just like a seamless experience of the movie, and

328
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:03,320
Speaker 1: you start freaking out and realize, oh, my goodness, we're

329
00:19:03,320 --> 00:19:05,640
Speaker 1: still in the same shot. How did they do this?

330
00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:09,000
Speaker 1: Stop it, stop shooting shooting, because you're just this is

331
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:13,640
Speaker 1: must be costing a fortune. Now this vent hymskirk painting here.

332
00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:17,080
Speaker 1: It is beautiful and it does seem realistic in a

333
00:19:17,119 --> 00:19:21,119
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but the baby Jesus in it is

334
00:19:21,280 --> 00:19:26,000
Speaker 1: messed up. He is a beefy grimlin power lifter, and

335
00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 1: not just so. He's super ripped with muscles all over

336
00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:34,159
Speaker 1: and has adult human man proportions. Does not have that

337
00:19:34,280 --> 00:19:36,840
Speaker 1: you know, large baby head and stubby legs. He's got

338
00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:41,000
Speaker 1: ripped muscle the arms and legs, and he's also doing

339
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:44,639
Speaker 1: this pose that's like this Donkey Kong pose, you know,

340
00:19:44,640 --> 00:19:47,240
Speaker 1: where he's like stomping with one leg up and down.

341
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:50,600
Speaker 1: He looks like he is like in a roid rage

342
00:19:50,640 --> 00:19:53,840
Speaker 1: against Mary. And it's it's notable too that there is

343
00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:57,600
Speaker 1: an angel standing in the background lighting the painting, like

344
00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:01,560
Speaker 1: a winged humanoid. And we're not even talking about that.

345
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:05,360
Speaker 1: We're talking about the baby as being the most unrealistic

346
00:20:05,400 --> 00:20:07,640
Speaker 1: portion of of the of the painting. But to come

347
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:09,679
Speaker 1: back to the theme in a different way than the

348
00:20:09,720 --> 00:20:12,880
Speaker 1: medieval artwork, this just seems like if somebody painted this now,

349
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:16,080
Speaker 1: it would come off as a deliberate act of blasphemy,

350
00:20:16,119 --> 00:20:18,480
Speaker 1: you know, it would look like somebody was trying to

351
00:20:19,080 --> 00:20:22,879
Speaker 1: make fun of the baby Jesus in some way. But no,

352
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:27,840
Speaker 1: I mean this, this appears to be genuinely reverent artwork. Uh.

353
00:20:27,880 --> 00:20:29,880
Speaker 1: And so why why would they do that with all

354
00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:33,080
Speaker 1: the muscles? I mean, it's especially noteworthy in the work

355
00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:36,399
Speaker 1: of Holm's correct because you see some other paintings that

356
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:40,280
Speaker 1: he did. He did a subsequent painting of of St.

357
00:20:40,359 --> 00:20:44,160
Speaker 1: Luke painting the Virgin Mary and the Baby, and it's

358
00:20:44,359 --> 00:20:47,960
Speaker 1: it's notable for a number of reasons. For starters, the

359
00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:52,719
Speaker 1: baby is less ridiculous, but also still fairly muscular and

360
00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:56,520
Speaker 1: has a parent on one hand. Also, you see in

361
00:20:56,560 --> 00:20:59,280
Speaker 1: the in the foreground there is a book that is

362
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:04,639
Speaker 1: apparently has to be uh a notable anatomy textbook. In

363
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:08,600
Speaker 1: the background there is somebody dissecting the corpse so that

364
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 1: they can better create sculptures of the human body. So

365
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:16,800
Speaker 1: the painting itself is kind of about the insane level

366
00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:19,840
Speaker 1: of detail that goes into depicting the human form and paintings,

367
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:23,240
Speaker 1: and about how you rely upon the work of Galen

368
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:27,159
Speaker 1: and and uh another anatomous how you're you're looking at

369
00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:31,399
Speaker 1: the classical sculpture as the model and the ideal human form,

370
00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 1: and yet the child is still this thing that is

371
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:39,320
Speaker 1: in a state of flux that is somehow outside of

372
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:43,000
Speaker 1: this new artistic tradition. Yeah, the child doesn't look as

373
00:21:43,040 --> 00:21:45,560
Speaker 1: as crazy as he did in the other painting, but

374
00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:50,600
Speaker 1: he's still got monstrously muscled legs. It looks like he

375
00:21:50,600 --> 00:21:55,040
Speaker 1: he reminds me his legs look like those um uh,

376
00:21:55,040 --> 00:21:57,760
Speaker 1: those Belgian blue cattle, you know, the ones where they

377
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:00,359
Speaker 1: have all that like the double muscles that they've been

378
00:22:00,359 --> 00:22:02,720
Speaker 1: bred for. And it looks like somebody stuffed a bunch

379
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:05,439
Speaker 1: of bean bags under their skin. Yeah, I think I

380
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:08,119
Speaker 1: think that's apt. It's still a very very muscular baby.

381
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:10,800
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, you can look at other

382
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:14,120
Speaker 1: paintings that that him's correct did. For instance, he did

383
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:18,520
Speaker 1: a fifteen thirty two painting of a family, a family portrait,

384
00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:21,240
Speaker 1: and it's just you know, a mom and dad, uh,

385
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:25,400
Speaker 1: two young children and then an infant and the infant. Yeah,

386
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:28,639
Speaker 1: it's still a little on the muscular side. But but

387
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,600
Speaker 1: would not instantly throw you off. If you just solve

388
00:22:31,680 --> 00:22:33,800
Speaker 1: this on a on a wall in a museum, you

389
00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:36,880
Speaker 1: wouldn't freak out and say, ah, muscle baby, what's going on?

390
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: You would just say, oh, well, there's another portrait of

391
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:43,200
Speaker 1: a family. Looks a little bit like Louie Anderson. But okay, yeah,

392
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:45,600
Speaker 1: but but in in the appropriate way that all babies

393
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:48,600
Speaker 1: should look kind of like Louie Anderson. Yeah, alright, so

394
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:51,600
Speaker 1: let's start taking this apart and figuring out what's going

395
00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:55,119
Speaker 1: on here. So for starters, this obviously wasn't simply a

396
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 1: case of artists didn't learn how to draw babies till later. Right,

397
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:00,359
Speaker 1: People all over the world, in different cult urs have

398
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:04,000
Speaker 1: learned different ways of representing the human body throughout history.

399
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:08,200
Speaker 1: And there have been methods before the medieval European art

400
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 1: traditions that were much more photo realistic. Yeah, so you know,

401
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:15,439
Speaker 1: we have to think about style, the artistic intention, but

402
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:19,040
Speaker 1: also about the subject matter itself. Uh. So we have

403
00:23:19,119 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 1: to ground artistic depictions of infants within the framework of

404
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,479
Speaker 1: the time. How did denizens of the Middle Age ages

405
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,399
Speaker 1: view babies? Well, that's a good question, and it turns

406
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:31,560
Speaker 1: out that is something that has undergone a decent amount

407
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:36,200
Speaker 1: of controversy over the years. Yeah, for starters, I mentioned

408
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: that Vox article earlier by Phil Edwards, and in it

409
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:43,320
Speaker 1: he speaks with Matthew Averett, an art history professor at

410
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,879
Speaker 1: Crichton University and editor of the anthology The Early Modern

411
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 1: Child in Art and History, and uh He points out

412
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,440
Speaker 1: that medieval paintings were typically commissioned by churches, which meant

413
00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 1: that any painting of a baby was most likely going

414
00:23:56,080 --> 00:24:00,159
Speaker 1: to be the baby Jesus, with some prominent except is

415
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,160
Speaker 1: here and there, like it might be Moses or John

416
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:05,280
Speaker 1: the Baptists, But generally you're if you're painting a baby

417
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:08,439
Speaker 1: during this time, you're probably painting the Christ child. So

418
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:11,880
Speaker 1: when you see babies in medieval European artwork. You're probably

419
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 1: not getting so much a sense of what they thought

420
00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:17,399
Speaker 1: of babies, but what they thought of the baby Jesus

421
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: in particular, right, which is a much more We'll get

422
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,920
Speaker 1: more into the theology of this question later, but but yeah,

423
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:25,840
Speaker 1: this is instantly more complicated than just hescy that that

424
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,920
Speaker 1: drooling infant over there, draw that infant as it looks now. Now,

425
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: we did mention the idea that medieval artists were less

426
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 1: interested in realistic depictions than artists of many other times

427
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:40,160
Speaker 1: and places, right, right, Yeah, it's only later that it's

428
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 1: particularly the Renaissance, that people became interested in naturalism and

429
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:47,879
Speaker 1: idealized forms, and looking back to these classical statues as

430
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:50,919
Speaker 1: a model. Evereite sort of refers to medieval artwork as

431
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:54,200
Speaker 1: a kind of expressionism, right. It doesn't usually get put

432
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: that way in the literature, but thinks about it as

433
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:01,160
Speaker 1: the forms are expressing ideas and feelings more than they

434
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: are like physical morphology. So it's less it's less about

435
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: what did Christ look like as a baby, and more

436
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: like how should how should I feel about the Christ child?

437
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 1: How should I feel about the birth of Christ? In

438
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: this story? Now, up to this point, if that's all,

439
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: you know, you still might be a little bit confused,

440
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: because you'd be like, Okay, so why am I seeing

441
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: a little Alan Arkin with muscles or something. We'll get

442
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: back to that in a minute. So I followed up

443
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: and went to this book that was edited by Matthew Everitt,

444
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: the called The Early Modern Child in Art and History,

445
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:37,800
Speaker 1: published by Rutledge in and Everitt wrote the intro chapter

446
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: on this book, and I thought, hey, he had some

447
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: interesting things to say about the artistic traditions of representing

448
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: children and babies. His intro chapter focuses a lot on

449
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:52,119
Speaker 1: updating and critiquing this foundational work in the field of

450
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 1: of medieval ideas about children and artistic representations of children.

451
00:25:57,560 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: And that was a nineteen sixty book about children and

452
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:04,399
Speaker 1: his Stree by the historian Philippe Aries. Now, Renaissance Europe

453
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 1: was a place and a time at which children were

454
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 1: a huge portion of the population. It's been estimated that

455
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: in Italian cities during the Renaissance, up to half of

456
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 1: the population was under fifteen years old. I mean, think

457
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: about that. But Aries believed that in the Middle Ages

458
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 1: in Europe, childhood did not really exist as a concept.

459
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: So for Aries. His idea was that in medieval thought,

460
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 1: childhood did not exist as a meaningful stage of life,

461
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:38,639
Speaker 1: but was basically a mere transition period which was quickly

462
00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: passed through and then forgotten. So for Aries, before the

463
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:47,000
Speaker 1: age of seven children were considered sort of miniature adults,

464
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: and then after the age of seven they were simply adults,

465
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: because at about the age of seven they would assume

466
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 1: adult roles in terms of labor and production. He also

467
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: believed this was due to high mortality of infants and

468
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: children in medieval Europe. Apparently they were just incredibly high

469
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 1: rates of exposure and abandonment of babies at the time,

470
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: and in summarizing areas work, Favorite writes that quote, children

471
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: appeared in medieval art, but as with the homunculous images

472
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: of Jesus, and we'll get to more about that in

473
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: a bit, children were portrayed as miniature adults because artists

474
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: and audiences had no conception of childhood and therefore would

475
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: not have been able to understand a child like Jesus. Now.

476
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: According to Arias, this began to change in the Renaissance,

477
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 1: when parents began to value childhood and childhood education as

478
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: distinct from adult education. A lot of this had to

479
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 1: do with changes in families, increases in marriages based on love,

480
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:46,639
Speaker 1: and the idea that you would you would nurture a

481
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: child and treat them specifically as a child, and how

482
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 1: you instructed them. Yeah. Just really this more modern concept

483
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: that the childhood is this bubble that should be protected

484
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: and maintained. You know that the world that present to

485
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 1: your child is maybe, you know, maybe not completely at

486
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: odds with reality, but there are going to be certain

487
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: elements of reality that are that are more finely edited

488
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: than others. Yeah. Now there might be some grains of

489
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: truth in what are he says, But beginning in about

490
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, scholars began to seriously diverge from Aria's

491
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: view of childhood is essentially non existent or meaningless in

492
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 1: medieval European thought. Everitt disagrees with it too. He though

493
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:28,879
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ways in which medieval and

494
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:32,400
Speaker 1: early modern depictions of children and babies are substantially different

495
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: from one another. Uh and from modern depictions. Of course,

496
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:37,360
Speaker 1: a lot of this had to do with the purpose

497
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: of the art and what it was used for. Just

498
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: one example, Averite says that strangely adult looking children in

499
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: some early modern paintings might be indicative of the fact

500
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 1: that sometimes these paintings were considered for children, sort of

501
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 1: showing them good examples. Quote. Parents and Renaissance Italy were

502
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 1: encouraged to have images of saintly children are and in

503
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: virgins because they set positive examples for children. So by analogy,

504
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: you might look at some of these musclely adult shaped

505
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: children and babies that might have been for the benefit

506
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: of young kids who would look at them and say,

507
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 1: I want to be that muscle baby. And likewise you

508
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: could see this being an expression of what the adults

509
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: want the child to be. I want you to be

510
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: this strong, regal and uh and and resilient individual. Yeah.

511
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: But then also it's informed by theological concepts, remembering that

512
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: a lot of these pictures of babies were supposed to

513
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: be the baby Jesus. That might have been depicted just

514
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: differently than other babies would be. And you got to

515
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 1: think about, like, um, who art was generally made for

516
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: in both the medieval and the Renaissance periods. Yeah, you

517
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: didn't see much in the way of art, especially uh.

518
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: Portraiture for the common people are certainly for the poor.

519
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: These were images for the wealthy ruling classes that were

520
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: These were pieces of art for the church and and

521
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 1: again often displayed biblical scenes or scenes of of of

522
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: importance within Christian tradition. And then everyone was working within

523
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: these artistic conventions. Like you can imagine yourself as an

524
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: artist at this time. The church comes to you, they

525
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: have a specific request, they want a particular biblical scene

526
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: recreated as a painting or some other medium, and then

527
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:24,719
Speaker 1: you have to follow through on it. And they're like

528
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: any client, they have certain uh ideas in mind, they

529
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: have certain existing works in mind, so you're kind of forced,

530
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: probably shoehorn into creating something within that artistic tradition. There's

531
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 1: not really a lot of room to try exciting new things.

532
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 1: And and again you have to represent these various theological

533
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: ideas as well, or you're you're having to pick up

534
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 1: on existing connections that are made in the literature. For example,

535
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: I was I was reading from this book by Mary

536
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: Design titled The Quest for the Christ Child in the

537
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: Later Middle Ages, and she points out that you'll often

538
00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: encounter these encounter these squaddle babies in medieval art that

539
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: look very similar to dead infants that are wrapped up

540
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 1: in grave shrouds, and this, she says, helps us appreciate

541
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: why Christ frequently appears in nativity scenes tightly swaddled and

542
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:18,200
Speaker 1: lying on a quote block like almost tomblike manger. And

543
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: I'll include an example of this on the the accompanying

544
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: page for this episode, because there's a wonderful piece from

545
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: around the fourteen fifty four, a German painting that displays

546
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: this really dead looking Christ child just wrapped up like

547
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 1: a money with this very vacant but believably infantile head. Yeah,

548
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: it does have the baby proportions right, like, it's got

549
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 1: the it's got the chubby cheeks, and it's got the

550
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: low set eyes. But it also looks miserable and somewhat lifeless. Yeah,

551
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 1: this is a piece by Andrea Mantania. And indeed you

552
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: look at this and you say, oh, that poor baby,

553
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: that poor Christ child. He looks a bit out of it.

554
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: He looks miserable, and and part of this is because

555
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: you had it was it was common in the in

556
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: the artistic traditions and in the literary traditions to make

557
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: this connection between the death of Christ, between between Christ

558
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: as a corpse in the tomb. Prior to resurrection and

559
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:20,719
Speaker 1: the initial birth of the Christ Child. It's almost like

560
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: the person of Christ in these medieval artworks is not

561
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: to be represented as Jesus would have been in that

562
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: scene in his life. What is sort of like loaded

563
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: with all the significance of every story about him all

564
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: at once. Yeah, and this comes back to the again,

565
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: to that medieval idea, especially that that a painting is

566
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: not just an illustration, it is conveying some very important

567
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: data about the subject, It is conveying theology to the viewer. Now, Dison,

568
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: she argues that just as God was a mystery to

569
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: medieval people, so too was the child. She touches on

570
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: a lot of these discussions that we've alluded already. She

571
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: points out that medieval historian David Herlihy argued that the

572
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 1: emergence of a new urban economy in the later Middle

573
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: Ages led to greater awareness and concern for children. Not

574
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: only this, but we came to idolize them as a

575
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: coping mechanism for the stress of day to day life.

576
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: So when times got tough, you thought like, oh, well,

577
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: how great it is to be a child at play

578
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 1: despite all the plague. And on top of this, though

579
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: There's another another thing going on here, and that's that

580
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 1: lay in religious people of the day all came to

581
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: admire the childlike aspects of the Christ child. So it's

582
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: not just uh, you know, the theological dimensions that are

583
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: important here to the Christ, but but but just the

584
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: idea that there's an innocence to the figure as well.

585
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 1: So Design points out that some medieval commentators noted the

586
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: childlike virtues of Jesus, and then you had the Cistercians

587
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: and the Franciscans both promoting devotion to the child Jesus,

588
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:02,959
Speaker 1: though both aimed for a more more complex understanding of Christ,

589
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: with sentimental childlike qualities kind of emerging as a byproduct.

590
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: So you have certainly had this older tradition where the

591
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 1: Christ child is depicted as an all knowing, all powerful

592
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:19,360
Speaker 1: super baby. But then this new approach is uh is

593
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: leaning more into a realistically sentimental depiction of a young Jesus. Still,

594
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:27,439
Speaker 1: Design stresses that there there are many categories for late

595
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: medieval depictions of the baby Jesus, and it's kind of

596
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: it would be disingenuous to say that you just had

597
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: two types of of infants. You didn't have just ugly

598
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: babies and realistic babies, or just super babies and real babies.

599
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to note all of the like, uh,

600
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,839
Speaker 1: the sort of fractious theological potential in the idea of

601
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: the Christ Child here, because the idea of the infant

602
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: Christ gives rise to these contradictions where whether you believe

603
00:34:57,600 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: in him as like an all knowing, all powerful super

604
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: baby or a normal baby, either one. I could see

605
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: people adhering to either one of those positions and finding

606
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: the other one blasphemous. Yeah, I mean, it's it's easy

607
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: to take take this for granted, I guess growing up

608
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:16,720
Speaker 1: and within Christian traditions and just being bombarded with images

609
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:20,280
Speaker 1: of the Christ Child. But just imagine, like all the

610
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: potential questions you have, like, Okay, this is the this

611
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: is the Son of God, this is God incarnate come

612
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: to earth to redeem humanity. So what is it like

613
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:33,280
Speaker 1: as a baby? Is it is it smart and man

614
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: like and its behavior or is it pooping itself? Is

615
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,799
Speaker 1: it is it puking? Is it doing all of these, um,

616
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: you know, at times of disturbing and gross things that

617
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 1: an actual larvel humanoid would do. I'm sure. I mean,

618
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: this has been subject to theological debate. Yeah, but once

619
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:52,919
Speaker 1: we're we're into the Renaissance. Here we have the middle

620
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 1: class growing in power and wealth, and there's an increased

621
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: demand for portraits. Plus there's an increased emphasis on courting

622
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,360
Speaker 1: the world as it is rather than the expressionism of

623
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,840
Speaker 1: the past. I think one of the great examples of this,

624
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:08,240
Speaker 1: when we've discussed on the show before, is Peter Brugal

625
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 1: the Elder, the sixteenth century Flemish artist whose paintings just

626
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: positively boil with depictions of contemporary and peasant life, even

627
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 1: in religious works. So busy. Yeah, but you can you

628
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:21,800
Speaker 1: can look at them and it gives you some insight

629
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: into what what was actually going on in the broader

630
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: world and the world outside of the church, and it's

631
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: books and it's uh, it's artistic traditions. Now, I want

632
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:33,680
Speaker 1: to have throw in one more note about nudity here

633
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: that I think is revealing, uh, the nudity of the

634
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 1: Christ child, because if you look at a lot of

635
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:43,840
Speaker 1: these images of late medieval and Renaissance baby Jesus Is,

636
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: you'll often find that the baby is naked, and sometimes

637
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: the baby is like extremely naked with just like exposed

638
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: genitalia to the point where it seems like a lot

639
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: of there was a lot of intent on making the

640
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:00,919
Speaker 1: child as naked as possible, and indeed it does become

641
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: common in Renaissance art to see the infant Jesus depicted

642
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: nude with visible genitalia. The late art historian Leo Steinberg

643
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 1: theorized that it had to do with ongoing theological debates

644
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: about the humanity or the transcendent divinity of Jesus. So

645
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 1: the nudity of the child and perhaps it's more realistic

646
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: depiction in general in general, is presented as proof of

647
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 1: his humanity. So this is yet again an answer to

648
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: a theological question. The idea is like, you know, was

649
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: Jesus fully human or was he some sort of spirit being?

650
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: And so they want to put their foot down and say, like, no,

651
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:37,760
Speaker 1: he had a human body. Yeah, yeah, I mean Jesus

652
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: Christ is largely held in Christian traditions as God incarnate

653
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 1: and therefore the product of a immortal woman, no matter

654
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:48,320
Speaker 1: how virginal and esteemed, and be the creator of the

655
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: universe God, so he is it. The is at the

656
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: very least a hybrid entity with attitudes leaning in mortal

657
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: or divine directions depending on you know, your particular theology

658
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 1: or in some cases, your particular heresy. So how you know,

659
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:06,279
Speaker 1: you end up asking how do you choose to think

660
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:09,480
Speaker 1: of and portray the newborn Christ as more human or

661
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: as more divine, as natural or as preternatural. And this

662
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,760
Speaker 1: whole discussion occurs as humans are still working out exactly

663
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:20,239
Speaker 1: what's happening during reproduction itself. Yeah, we didn't even get

664
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: into that yet. I mean, how are these infant bodies

665
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 1: formed in the first place? Yeah? Does Mary contribute to

666
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,879
Speaker 1: the Christ child's humanity merely by being its vessel? Does

667
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: she contribute to his flesh? Is there is there a

668
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: resemblance between mother and child here? Uh? So, keep all

669
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 1: of this in mind as we take one more break

670
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: and come back to continue to tackle this question and

671
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: indeed summon the homunculous. Thank alright, we're back, Robert. Let's

672
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: summon the homunculous. Yes, the homunculous. Now, when we when

673
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: we talk about homunculi imagine a number of people think

674
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: rather understand ndably, of the the alchemical homunculous, the idea

675
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:08,400
Speaker 1: of an artificial, diminutive humanoid that is cooked up. You know,

676
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: wizards laboratory, right, So you might have an alchemist like

677
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:15,720
Speaker 1: Paracelsus who says that I can create a chemical human

678
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: one that is out, yeah, out of synthetic ingredients, I

679
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 1: will make a human homunculous, a small man. And that's

680
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,919
Speaker 1: the funky chemical spelling to the y in it. Here's

681
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 1: a quick quote from Mary Baine Campbell from artificial Men, alchemy,

682
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: trans substantiation, and the homunculous quote Mary, even to the

683
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: Protestants who worked to reduce for importance in the dramatists,

684
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: persona of the divine was and had to be a

685
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: partner in this procreation, or Jesus could not be an

686
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:51,360
Speaker 1: incarnate god, half human, half divine. Nonetheless, the trans substantiation

687
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:54,800
Speaker 1: of the sacramental feast of the Eucharist was a process

688
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: that became at least potentially susceptible to chemical Again with

689
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: the y At explanation. In the intellectual world of the Reformation,

690
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: a world that included the increasingly philosophical and spiritualized discipline

691
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: of chemistry, the art of transmutation, and an increasingly naturalized theology. Oh,

692
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 1: I've never made that connection before, but that's amazing. So

693
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: believing in the transubstantiation of the eucharis, meaning that when

694
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: you take communion, the bread physically truly is transformed into

695
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: the body of Christ, and that the wine physically truly

696
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 1: is transformed into the Blood of Christ. These are theological dogmas,

697
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: but that if you take them literally, you start to

698
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: believe that there may be other ways in which substances

699
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 1: can be transformed into living tissue. Right it It introduces

700
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:48,879
Speaker 1: a a magical concept that that you've taken as a

701
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: as a literal fact turns a number of different things

702
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: on its head. Yeah. Now, like all sexually reproducing species,

703
00:40:55,960 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: humans engage insects to perform sexual recombination. We generally don't

704
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: follow the idea of spontaneous generation anymore. We think that

705
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 1: generally life most of the time comes from life, and

706
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: so when sexual recombination happens in sexually reproducing species, you

707
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 1: have a random mixing of genes from the mother and

708
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: the father. So our our sexual cells are known as

709
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: gamme eats, the male sperm and the female egg, and

710
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 1: each of these contained twenty three chromosomes, which is half

711
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 1: the normal number of chromosomes in a cell, and then

712
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: they fuse together to form a new zygote with forty

713
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: six chromosomes of randomly jumbled genes from the mother and

714
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,280
Speaker 1: from the father, and these cells then begin to divide

715
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:38,760
Speaker 1: until they start to take the shape of an embryo

716
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 1: within the mother's uterus. Those are the known basics of

717
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: actual sexual reproduction, but it hasn't always been taken for

718
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: granted that this is how it happens. And in fact,

719
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: I think a great idea for a future episode or

720
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 1: series of episodes would be the question of why sexual recombination?

721
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 1: Why don't we just all do a sexual reproduction and

722
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 1: like bacteria mind or something like that, why don't we

723
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: just split in half and make clones of ourselves? In biology,

724
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: this question is often framed as what compensates for the

725
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: cost of males? But yeah, that's a good question to explore.

726
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: We should come back to it in the future. But

727
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: but yeah, so to continue, we know that sexual recombination

728
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: takes information from the mother and from the father and

729
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: fuses it to create a new cell, a new being,

730
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: by jumbling together bits of the blueprints that make up

731
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 1: both of the parents. Yeah, and and you know is

732
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 1: is early as three fifty BC. Aristotle proposed a theory

733
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,280
Speaker 1: of epigenesis, which was essentially correct. Yeah. This was basically

734
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: the idea that the sperm and egg joined to create

735
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: undifferentiated cells like stem cells, which then matured over time

736
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: into bodies. Maybe not correct in all the details as

737
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: he imagined it, but it basically gets the gist of

738
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 1: reproduction right. And yet just a few centuries ago you

739
00:42:57,440 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: had many people who believed in what was known as

740
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 1: pre formation ism, yeah, or pre formation theory. So in

741
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many very learned or

742
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: supposedly learned scholars and natural philosophers had this idea that

743
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:19,279
Speaker 1: the embryonic human being was already fully formed in its

744
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: in its entirety, except being like smaller or maybe in

745
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: a in a smaller or sort of less less defined

746
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:30,479
Speaker 1: shape within the sex cells of the mother or the father.

747
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:34,359
Speaker 1: They were like fully formed versions of themselves which would

748
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: simply grow in size or possibly change in shape within

749
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: the uterus during pregnancy. Essentially the sex cells were each

750
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: a homunculus. Yeah, and you see some wonderful artistic depictions

751
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: of this, illustrations of how this might go down. Use

752
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: imagine number of this have seen these of a sperm

753
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: and there's a tiny human in the sperm. The idea

754
00:43:56,800 --> 00:44:00,320
Speaker 1: here is that the male of the species just shoots

755
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: a tiny human into the female, and the female is

756
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 1: just where that tiny human grows. Yeah. So one interesting

757
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:09,799
Speaker 1: side note I think I would like to point out

758
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:13,840
Speaker 1: that the transition from preformation theory to modern reproductive theory

759
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: is mainly a shift in emphasis about what exactly gets

760
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: transmitted during sex and during birth. Under preformation theory, what

761
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 1: gets transmitted is material or the means to make material grow.

762
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: You know, it's either you either if you believe that

763
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:34,839
Speaker 1: the sperm cell is a pre fully formed human, it's

764
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 1: being transmitted into the uterus, or if you believe that

765
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: the egg is a pre fully formed human. Uh, the

766
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction puts some chemical in place that allows it

767
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,800
Speaker 1: to grow. But under modern theory, what gets transmitted is

768
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 1: not material so much as information. It's not getting the

769
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: rebels a tiny death star, it's getting them the plans

770
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:59,239
Speaker 1: for the death star. But by focusing on material like this,

771
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: preform nation theory leads to a problem. The sperm and

772
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: the egg can't both be a homunculus, or in what

773
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: in that case, what's the point of the homunculus? So

774
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: which one is it here you get the controversy between

775
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: the spermists and the Ovists. Yes, now we've touched a

776
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: little bit on the spurmose. But but Ovis they believe

777
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: that the egg contained all that was needed, and it

778
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:25,919
Speaker 1: mean merely required. Male seed is a kind of chemical trigger. Yeah,

779
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: it would be some kind of vapor that would cause

780
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: the growth. Yeah, just a sort of a firing of

781
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: the starter pistol that says, all right, grow the homunculus. Okay,

782
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: now my favorite, uh, the later day Ovist is an

783
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: Italian physiologist and priest, Lazarro Spalonzani, who lives through spalon

784
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 1: Zani is great. So he believed, as did Charles Bonnett,

785
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: in the Ovist version of preformation theory, and the specifics

786
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: of their idea is that God created the first female

787
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: specimen of every spece ease, and when he created that

788
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: first female, he implanted within her the tiny forms of

789
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 1: all future descendants, fully shaped from the beginning, needing only

790
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 1: to grow, and the semen only somehow stimulated this growth.

791
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: But his beliefs about the constituents of semen are pretty amazing. Yeah.

792
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 1: So so again, as Balonzani, he believed this was just

793
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: like a chemical trigger, and that that was all that

794
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,400
Speaker 1: the semen was actually contributing. And yet he was able

795
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: to take a look at it and he identified that

796
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: there was something kind of wormy going on in there.

797
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: There there was some sort of of wormy substance in

798
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 1: the semen. But how did he make sense of these, uh,

799
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 1: these wormy things in the semen? Well, based on popular

800
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 1: theories of the day concerning in the idea of inheritable

801
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: intestinal worms, the idea that you would have intestinal worms

802
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: and you would pass them on to children and there

803
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: into the grandchildren, etcetera, he thought that the sperm, what

804
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: we know now as the sperm, might be parasites and

805
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:00,720
Speaker 1: that the seminal fluid alone served as the chemical trigger

806
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: for the red for the egg. And he he famously

807
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: this famously led to the use of pants on frogs

808
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: and other amphibians as an attempt to uh separate these

809
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: two entities to and to really figure out exactly what

810
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: was going on during the deposit of fluid in sexual reproduction,

811
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: so testing the hypothesis that male sex cells are actually

812
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:27,720
Speaker 1: just parasites, and this led we could do a whole episode,

813
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 1: I think on the various experiments that followed putting tiny

814
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 1: pants on frogs, eventually working his way up to more

815
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:39,160
Speaker 1: advanced organisms such as a dog. Um. But it it,

816
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,360
Speaker 1: and it becomes. It becomes unintentionally hilarious at times, but

817
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: also ultimately illuminating for later later readers to look back

818
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: on his experiments and watch this progression towards an understanding

819
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:53,719
Speaker 1: of the truth of sexual reproduction. Right, So that guy

820
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,799
Speaker 1: was an ovist, but there were all these spermists as well,

821
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,879
Speaker 1: who believed that the sperm cells were the individually full

822
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 1: formed humans shrunk down to tiny size. Yeah, and I

823
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: feel like these are more Um, these tended to be

824
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:11,760
Speaker 1: more sort of scandalous and and and ridiculous to modern

825
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:13,839
Speaker 1: viewers for a number of reasons, but in part because

826
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: there is such an inherent like chauvinistic ideology here, the

827
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: idea that will clearly it's all them, it's just the

828
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: man doing it. Yeah. It really feels like trying to

829
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:29,400
Speaker 1: write the woman's agency out of the generation of new generations. Yeah.

830
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:32,320
Speaker 1: In the seventeen and eighteen centuries, you had Dutch physicist

831
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 1: Nicholas heart Seeker, who who definitely took a hardline sperm

832
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: its approach, postulating that each sperm contained a completely preformed

833
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: humanoid or homunculous and this came with with with illustrations,

834
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,200
Speaker 1: those illustrations I alluded to earlier. Yeah, they're fantastic, where

835
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: the slightly more grown up versions of the cells as

836
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: the homunculus gets bigger, look kind of like creepy Christmas

837
00:48:56,600 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 1: ornaments where they're like kind of a wavy, wobbly human

838
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: warm hanging from like a thread on the top of

839
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 1: his head. Yeah, it is, uh, they're they're they're kind

840
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: of creepy to look at, but also kind of yeah,

841
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:09,719
Speaker 1: kind of holy too. Now, either way you cut it,

842
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:13,480
Speaker 1: preformation theory posits something that sounds kind of absurd, because

843
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: let's think about the implications for a second. Take the

844
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 1: sper most position. Say you're Nicholas Heartseeker. If the spermus

845
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: were correct, then a man has within his sex organs

846
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,400
Speaker 1: tiny versions of the men and women that will become

847
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 1: his descendants. And those tiny men inside that man must

848
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: also have within them the tiny men and women that

849
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: will become that first man's grandchildren and so on and

850
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:41,799
Speaker 1: so forth. But of course, since they, you know, they're

851
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 1: tiny men within a tiny man, they must be proportionally

852
00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: smaller to start with, Right, so you get this ongoing

853
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 1: regress of shrinking funeral future generations to fit inside perpetually

854
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:59,320
Speaker 1: smaller generations. It's homunculi all the way down. And somebody

855
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: out there I need to stop using that metaphor and

856
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: then listening to Sturgill Simpson too much. I think, Uh,

857
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:08,200
Speaker 1: somebody out there who's really Matt savvy should take this

858
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 1: thought experiment. Given this assumption of a sperm sized man

859
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:16,279
Speaker 1: within every man, and then a proportionally sperm sized man

860
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: within the original tiny man, how many generations would you

861
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 1: need to go down before your homunculous was smaller than

862
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 1: one plank length? I like this, Yeah, because it would.

863
00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:31,360
Speaker 1: It would ultimately give you, like, like a hard limit

864
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: to the generations of man. Yeah, at some point, your

865
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 1: physics isn't gonna work anymore. How are you gonna make

866
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 1: that homunculous? Not out of particles, that's for sure. So

867
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: in all of this, we we've ultimately come back around

868
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:47,359
Speaker 1: to this idea of homunculous theory. Uh and uh. Again,

869
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 1: we've talked about the homuncula a little bit in terms

870
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,239
Speaker 1: of alchemy, where the creature is not quite a human

871
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,879
Speaker 1: but he's a rational animal and uh and ultimately another

872
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:58,919
Speaker 1: fictional page and humanity's dream of mastering life and death.

873
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: But Robert, how does this come back to our our

874
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:04,360
Speaker 1: medieval and Renaissance art theme we were talking? Okay, So

875
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: first of all, it's important to note that there was

876
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: this wasn't a case of just clerics on one side,

877
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: alchemist on the other, and homunculi in between. I guess uh,

878
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:15,600
Speaker 1: here's a here's a quick quote from William R. Newman

879
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,320
Speaker 1: in Western Society and Alchemy from twelve hundred fifteen hundred,

880
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 1: publishing the Journal of Medieval History in Night. This quote

881
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: the fact that alchemists made analogies between the alchemistic process

882
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: and the Christian mysteries. It's not so strange when we

883
00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 1: remember that in the Middle Ages most alchemists were clerics.

884
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 1: Although it is true that a number of clerics were

885
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,759
Speaker 1: offended by Henry the sixth of England's appeal in which

886
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,479
Speaker 1: the transmutation of metal was likened to the consecration during

887
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:48,240
Speaker 1: Holy Mass, many others did not object. So the idea

888
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: here is that, yeah, don't don't think of the homunculous

889
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 1: as being just this thing that has talked about and

890
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: written about by individuals outside of the Church. No, the

891
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: the the the authors of homunk who is theory were

892
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 1: members of the clergy in many cases, and therefore it

893
00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: makes sense that in terms of trying to figure out

894
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: the Christ Child, trying to figure out what uh an

895
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:14,919
Speaker 1: infant Jesus would be, what God is a baby would

896
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,279
Speaker 1: look like, they would end up drawing in some of

897
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: these ideas about homuncular theory, like making a sort of

898
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: perfect chemical miniature copy of an adult human, a creature

899
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: that is a preformed not only in body, but in

900
00:52:30,320 --> 00:52:34,439
Speaker 1: spirit and mind. Uh. And thus we have so many

901
00:52:34,520 --> 00:52:37,880
Speaker 1: of these depictions of the Christ Child as being this tiny,

902
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: perfect humanoid who is already regal and uh and holy

903
00:52:42,719 --> 00:52:46,480
Speaker 1: in its uh just bodily positioning and its mannerisms and

904
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:48,800
Speaker 1: its appearance, or you can think of it as just

905
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 1: God without the limitations of actual human infancy. And I

906
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: guess whether an individual Christian finds that ideal that idea

907
00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 1: appealing or not appealing, I guess just has to do

908
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: with their theology, right. Yeah, you know we were talking

909
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: earlier about whether one of the the man like baby

910
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 1: Jesus is would speak or not well apparently it was.

911
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 1: It was In many cases, the baby Jesus is not

912
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 1: meant to speak, but is communicating via gestures. So you

913
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: do see this in a lot of the artistic depictions.

914
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:19,920
Speaker 1: There's kind of a like he's he's pointing out to

915
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:22,080
Speaker 1: one side as if to say, oh, you've come to

916
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 1: see me. Great, we have some chairs and some modervas

917
00:53:24,680 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: over here. Um, if you will just be seated next

918
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: to the cows. Mary design says quote as a homunculous

919
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,239
Speaker 1: Jesus simply grew in size within Mary's womb instead of

920
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: gradually acquiring a more complex body as did other unborn children,

921
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: sort of perfect from the beginning. Yeah, so I think

922
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: this is this is a very important argument to keep

923
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:49,760
Speaker 1: in mind when looking at late medieval and medieval artistic

924
00:53:49,800 --> 00:53:52,560
Speaker 1: depictions of the Christ Child, that there is this, uh,

925
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: this attempt to understand theologically what that child will consist of.

926
00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:00,760
Speaker 1: And we have this this idea of the homoculi Jesus,

927
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:04,760
Speaker 1: the idea of a preformed and perfect, tiny human Jesus

928
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:08,280
Speaker 1: that would have emerged from Mary and then grown proportionally

929
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: there was very much in sync with many of the

930
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:14,560
Speaker 1: alchemical ideas the day. Okay, Robert. Let's say I want

931
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 1: to make a homunculous not not a not a homunculous

932
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 1: theory version of Jesus, but just a regular an old

933
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:25,399
Speaker 1: fashioned homunculous. Yeah, I'm getting interested in alchemy. I want

934
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: to bake a cake. Uh, and that cake is a

935
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:31,160
Speaker 1: homunculous What should I do? Well, first of all, get

936
00:54:31,160 --> 00:54:33,800
Speaker 1: yourself a copy of a medieval text known as the

937
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:36,879
Speaker 1: Book of the Cow, because it lays out some rather

938
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:40,279
Speaker 1: grotesque and confusing instructions in the art of do it

939
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:42,960
Speaker 1: yourself a monculi brewing. So let me tell you what

940
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 1: you'll need for this. Okay, this is straight from the

941
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: Book of the Cow. Uh. First of all, you'll need

942
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:50,840
Speaker 1: wizard semen. And this makes sense from a from a

943
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: spermost point of view, right, Okay, if you have the

944
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: sperm of the wizard, you have probably everything you need

945
00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:00,320
Speaker 1: to build a human or humanoid creature. Why does it

946
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:04,359
Speaker 1: need to be a wizard? Well, um, I'm not sure

947
00:55:04,360 --> 00:55:06,160
Speaker 1: if that means that you if you're engaging in the

948
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:10,880
Speaker 1: homunculi creation, you're probably yourself a wizard or magician and

949
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 1: therefore engaged in a very solitary practice. Oh yeah, that

950
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: that could be it, or maybe there's something innately magical

951
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:19,960
Speaker 1: about the magician seman. I'm not sure you're gonna need

952
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 1: animal blood. You're gonna need an actual cow or or

953
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: are you You're gonna need sulfur, a magnet. You're gonna

954
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 1: need green tutia or a sulfate of iron and a

955
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:35,319
Speaker 1: large glass or lead vessel. Oh, and you'll need one

956
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:40,719
Speaker 1: more thing. You'll need the sunstone. What's the sunstone? Robert Well,

957
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 1: the sunstone is a mystical phosphorescent elixir. So that this

958
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:47,360
Speaker 1: is the point I know that you engage in mixology

959
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 1: as well. This is the point in the cocktail recipe

960
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:53,080
Speaker 1: where you realize that that you absolutely cannot make the

961
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 1: drink because you're missing a vital, rare or expensive ingredient,

962
00:55:57,440 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: in this case, an ingredient that of course does not

963
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: actually exist. It is it is a mystical ingredient. And

964
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: if you have that, then yeah, you've got to light

965
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: up on making a homunculi. But if not, you're just

966
00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 1: left with a you know, a vessel full of wizard

967
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:16,120
Speaker 1: semen in cow blood. Yeah, very disappointing. Now I'll spare

968
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 1: everyone the additional instructions here but I'll link to a

969
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: blog post on the landing page for this episode is

970
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind that rolls through. All you

971
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: have to do there to to grow the homunculi within

972
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,800
Speaker 1: the cow and then allow it to develop to the

973
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: point where you can then harvest the homunculi and use

974
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 1: it as an ingredient in spells to say, turn yourself

975
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: invisible or give you the gift of flight. Yeah. Uh,

976
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:45,920
Speaker 1: but in all things um alchemical, it's it's all rather

977
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: confusing and full of symbolism and hidden messages, just like

978
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: medieval art. Yeah exactly. All right, Well, that's gonna wrap

979
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 1: it up for our discussion today, but remember to go

980
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and check

981
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:00,759
Speaker 1: out the image gallery that Robert is putting together of

982
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:04,040
Speaker 1: some of these fantastic works of medieval and Renaissance art

983
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:07,560
Speaker 1: showing the various stages of creepy baby development in art history.

984
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:09,800
Speaker 1: That's right. You're just gonna have to see some of

985
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: these for yourself to, uh to to really get to

986
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,719
Speaker 1: grasp what we're talking about here. Uh. And hey, when

987
00:57:15,800 --> 00:57:17,560
Speaker 1: you're there at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,

988
00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 1: you can check out all the other podcast episodes we've done.

989
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 1: You can check out blog posts and videos, as well

990
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:26,919
Speaker 1: as links out to our various social media accounts such

991
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram and so forth. As always,

992
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: thanks to our audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison

993
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: for doing a killer job. And if you want to

994
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly, as always, you can

995
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:42,640
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

996
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:55,440
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

997
00:57:55,600 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com lit five five

998
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: five po