Monday 1 October 2012

The Holy Roman Emperor and the Mothra Hordes


Dear readers, I begin this week’s edition with the happy announcement that recently I have been nominated for not one, but two blog awards. 
First, thanks go to Scary Carrie at the Travelin-gineer, for giving me the Liebster Award.  Her blog is a cute and funny look at stereotypes of traveling Americans abroad and how not to be an obnoxious tourist.
Many thanks also to CrakGenius for the nod with the Versatile Blogger Award.  CG is neither a plumber nor a drug dealer, but he is a man with hilarious experiences involving scorpions and allergy medication, among other things.

With these awards you’re supposed to follow various rules, answering questions about yourself in a blog post and nominating several other blogs to receive the award and do the same.  However, you do not come here to read about me, you come here to look at pictures of nude nuns and rabbits with guns, according to Google.  As such I am going to cheat and just direct you to my blogroll at the right of the page for some blogs I read which are funny and awesome, and thus you should check them out.

With that, we turn to this week’s picture.  In honor of receiving the award-nods above, I thought a bit of apotheosis would be appropriately modest.
The Apotheosis of Charles VI by Paul Troger is an 18th century fresco found in Göttweig Abbey. 

Apotheosis, we recall, is the exaltation of a figure to divine status, the transformation of man into a god.  Here it is the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, depicted as the god Apollo.  Because that is the kind of association you make when you are a Roman Catholic ruler, apparently.
So he’s charging around in his golden chariot as a new god, leering death rays out of his eyeballs at the viewer.  But the stuff going on around the fringes is far more entertaining. 
First, we have Mothman, scattering flowers in his honor.  I kind of assume this is supposed to be an angel of some sort, but moth wings kind of make for the least impressive angel ever.  I mean, if anyone brushes against him, he’s crippled.  And no god wants an army of angel supporters that keep flying into bonfires.
Next, there is the most sarcastic angel ever.  She is playing that trumpet thinking, “Oh.  Yeah.  Great.  A new god-master.  Just what I wanted.  No really.”  I’m pretty sure she’d be making rude gestures if her hands weren’t full.
Then we come to the flying monkey gremlins.  This may be the missing evolutionary link to our ancient bird ancestors.  Either that, or the product of a jungle party where the chimpanzees and eagles got really drunk.
More moth-winged folks, but this time the wings are attached to nothing but baby heads looking lovingly at each other.  Because that’s not creepy.
Finally, we have a man with very large, fake elf ears being abducted by half-snake people with paws and dragon wings.  Or maybe they’re just playing invisible 3D Twister.  The woman with the spear they’re looking at might actually have the game spinner behind her shield.  I bet it is difficult to play Twister when you haven’t got legs.

So yes.  Turn into a god and get snarky followers with monstrous deformities.  Also blog awards.  Not that you turn into a god and automatically get blog awards.  Although I bet you would have some pretty great blog-fodder as a god. 

9 comments:

  1. Ms Sarcastic Angel is flaunting her bosom in a most ungodly fashion. After blasting the emperor's ears with her trumpet, she might well shout: "That's the only blowjob you're getting from me!"

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    1. Ha! I think you may be right. She looks like she would be up for using tarty taunting techniques to make her point.

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  2. Look at you with your multiple award winning blog. Congratulations!
    What the hell is going on with that painting? I'm sure there's a bunch of myths you need to be familiar with in order to comprehend the meaning of moth people or moth-floating-heads. But I sure don't know why demon/elf hybrid things are playing twister. I think the disgruntled angel is mad that her hands are full so she can't pull up her blouse. So after all these frat-boy angels are gawking at her angel chest. "Oh, come on, angels, grow up! Like you haven't seen a heavenly boob before?"

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    1. Thank you! The thing is, heavenly boobs are one of the most common sights in classical artwork. And non-heavenly boobs. Really if there is a female pictured, it often seems like having a bare mammary gland or two in greeting was considered only polite, like a bow or a handshake. But I would definitely be annoyed if a wardrobe malfunction and full hands put me in the leering view of frat-boy angels.

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  3. What a perfect piece to review in celebration of your blog awards! And, you're most welcome for the VBA.

    Looking at this fresco, something caught my eye and I had to find a larger version to see if I was really seeing this. To the left of the chariot in the group of non-angelic folk hanging out on the cloud, right behind the guy in purple and blue with the bro-stache and the bottle of gin, there's a chubby child making out with a marble bust. Seriously? Yeah... because that's normal.

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    1. You're quite right with the child-statue makeout session. It looks like there's another chubby cherub with his hand on the statue's head and his face obscured, so it might even be a three-way. I guess the Holy Roman Emperor liked his child-angel entertainment on the freaky side...

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  4. I'm just amazed how at how much solidly-built wheelchairs were in those days. Are we still allowed to call them "wheelchairs"? Gilded motobility scooters, whatever. I don't suppose that the alternatively-enabled could afford the feed for the animals these days.

    Damned well done with the award nonimations, damned well done indeed!

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  5. Thank you muchly, good sir. It is an extremely finely crafted gilded mobility vehicle, to be sure. Although I would have thought that being Apollo, it might have been solar-powered; but then I suppose that wouldn't give one the same rush of domination.

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  6. That moth angel just wants to be different. Like Pickleope.

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