“Allegory:” I believe this is a code word
artists use for their work when they got drunk one night and painted the first
thing that came into their heads/sculpted
something horrific/trashed some furniture and had to explain it to their
roommate.
This pair of paintings by Italian artist Lorenzo
Lotto does little to persuade me otherwise.
First: The Allegory of Virtue and Vice.
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| Allegory of Virtue and Vice – Lorenzo Lotto, 1505 |
So, if you live a life of vice, you might
die in a shipwreck, but you will have had so much wine that you will not care. You get a lush field of grass to recline in,
fresh grapes, and when you have to vomit, you get a bucket made of solid gold.
If you live a life of virtue, you will
crawl around in a barren wasteland of dirt and rocks naked, striving to do
something useful with your meagre means.
Ultimately a colony of bats will seize you
and dump you into what appears to be an erupting volcano.
The Allegory of Chastity is even simpler.
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| Allegory of Chastity – Lorenzo Lotto, c. 1505 |
On close inspection, I assume he’s
supposed to be scattering flowers over her pure form. But my first impression at a glance was: Living
a chaste life is like getting pissed on by a smug cherub.
Not sure this is supposed to be the
take-away message. Moral lessons were
never my strong point.
All
images are from the National
Gallery of Art.
The chaste maiden is being watched by a pole dancer with hairy legs. I think the pole dancer has a girl crush, so maybe the cherub piss is making her keep her distance.
ReplyDeleteI imagine cherub piss would be a fairly effective admirer repellent. Although it might attract a whole different variety of creeper....
DeleteGreat. Now I have Billy Joel singing "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints... the sinners are much more fun... darlin' only the good die young!" looping in my head!
ReplyDeleteIt's true! I mean, that paragon of virtue being sacrificed to the volcano can't be more than age six.
DeleteI thought the angel was peeing, too. What I couldn't figure out is if the puking dude had his tail or his private parts between his legs.
ReplyDelete