Histori(an) Has Its Eyes On You

August 4, 2016 8:22 AM

A painting at Christie's sheds new light on how watermelons have changed over time. Depictions of The Last Supper tell us how portion sizes have changed over time. Medieval paintings of Noah's Ark tell us how ships have changed over time. Can you think of other examples in this genre?
posted by dzkalman (42 comments total)

"It's just the world was black and white then."

Is "obligatory Calvin & Hobbes" a thing? Can we make it a thing?
posted by Etrigan at 8:24 AM on August 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

I thought that watermelon thing had been debunked. It's just an unripe one.
posted by Bee'sWing at 8:27 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Probably it's best not to assume that pre-modern paintings are realistic depictions of virtually anything, though.
posted by praemunire at 8:28 AM on August 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Bee'sWing, take a look at the article update, which addresses this.
posted by dzkalman at 8:31 AM on August 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Bee'sWing, they take that on in the article: the black seeds indicate that the watermelon was ripe.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:32 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love seeing paintings of older breeds of animals. :)
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:37 AM on August 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

I learned a long time ago that you could learn a lot about the mundane aspects of a time by looking at the mundane objects in a painting from that time, courtesy of that great historian Fernand Braudel in his book The Structures of Everday Life. (An excellent book.) Dinner scenes are great to learn about cutlery and plates and how things are served. Ignore the Jesi and Marys and look at the details and background.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:41 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

100 years of dog breed "improvement".

Photographs, not paintings.
posted by amtho at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2016 [24 favorites]

I love seeing paintings of older breeds of animals.

Yes, looking at older forms of dogs is neat even if I have reservations about the versimilitude of the paintings. (They are all still visibly good dogs.)
posted by praemunire at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

More on the history and development of the watermelon.


An obvious example of massive change through selective breeding is corn, although I am not aware of any artistic depictions demonstrating this.
posted by slkinsey at 9:02 AM on August 4, 2016

The Toast's "two monks" may also have something to contribute to this discussion.
posted by LegallyBread at 9:03 AM on August 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's a shame they bred the "flying gallop" out of horses.
It's not a hoverboard, but it would do.
posted by Kabanos at 9:04 AM on August 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Isn't it possible that the artist may have painted an unripe watermelon with black seeds because he thought it looked better?
posted by jeweled accumulation at 9:10 AM on August 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

CanelettoOilpainter, his paintings of Venice document the rise in water level in the city.
posted by effluvia at 9:17 AM on August 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

another gmo i'll have to eliminate from my diet, smh
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:25 AM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

In terms of ephemeral objects and phenomena that we don't have extensive written or direct tangible evidence of...

Ancient and medieval hairstyles. Certain garments, especially underwear. Medieval fighting techniques, from illustrated manuals and illuminations. The appearance of caparisons (the big flowing pieces of decorative fabric draped over medieval horses). Ancient and medieval saddles. Lots of musical instruments. What crowns looked like (there are only a couple of surviving medieval English crowns).

On the other hand, art can be misleading. For example, kings are very frequently depicted wearing a crown (to make it easier to identify them), when in fact crown-wearing was only done a few times per year, at least in England and France.

In addition to issues of realism in pre-modern art, one does have to be careful to take into account the biases that go into what art was made->what art survives->what art has been studied and publicized.
posted by jedicus at 9:32 AM on August 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

Hundreds of paintings illustrate how much more prudish and literal we have become over time.
posted by googly at 9:40 AM on August 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Smithsonian: How Paintings of Sunsets Immortalize Past Volcanic Eruptions.
Link to paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Link to an earlier paper.
posted by Kabanos at 9:42 AM on August 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

100 years of dog breed "improvement".

Half of Brain: This is monstrous, those poor animals
Other Half of Brain: LOOK AT THE STUBBY LITTLE LEGS
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:42 AM on August 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

In terms of ephemeral objects and phenomena that we don't have extensive written or direct tangible evidence of...

"However there are definitely no pies that survived the medieval period."
posted by Etrigan at 9:43 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Bee'sWing, they take that on in the article: the black seeds indicate that the watermelon was ripe.

Yet the article also goes on to note that their are "normal" looking watermelons in other paintings from the same time period, noting that "doesn't disprove that uncultivated watermelons, like the ones in Stanchi's painting" existed.

It could also mean that there was more than one distinct variety, and that the one we know today was more popular and continued to be cultivated, while the variety in Stanchi's painting fell out of favor and was no longer cultivated.
posted by fairmettle at 9:47 AM on August 4, 2016

This sounds like a job for the Banzai Institute.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:59 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pugs used to have snouts.
Greyhounds were occasionally crossbred with mastiffs,as were Quarterhorses with Thoroughbreds.
posted by brujita at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2016

I read somewhere that someone did analysis of suits of armor over time, which of course are built to fit the wearer, and found that European men have been getting taller over the last thousand years.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:01 AM on August 4, 2016

Here's a historic arms and armor forum discussion on the implications of armor sizing, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) has an article on Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions regarding Arms and Armor, that includes this paragraph:

Medical and anthropological research demonstrates that the average height of men and women has gradually increased over the centuries, a process that, for reasons of progressively better diet and public health, has accelerated during the past 150 years or so. The majority of surviving armors from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appear to confirm these findings.

Business Insider has an overview of what wild fruit looked like compared to modern forms, but only uses the watermelon painting from the OP, and instead includes photos for banana, eggplant, carrot, corn and peach.

Related: Using Art to Study the Past: Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation (White House History.org teaching resource)

But when using art to understand the past, it is good to question is it accurate?
posted by filthy light thief at 10:49 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

The decline of rabbit society from an armed force with a functional judicial system to the creatures we know today would be totally unknown aside from medieval art.
posted by Vortisaur at 10:50 AM on August 4, 2016 [20 favorites]

Watermelon from 1667.
Watermelon from 1770.
Melon from 1750-1775. Figs look pretty much the same as now.
A strange Last Supper where they're at the fruit course but somebody left a bunch of cardoon on the table. Here's another cardoon.
Not so still life.
Bird pies with the bird's head and wings sticking out of the pie.

Everything tagged as "food" at the Museo del Prado.
posted by sukeban at 10:54 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Probably it's best not to assume that pre-modern paintings are realistic depictions of virtually anything, though.

Aside from the obvious flying demons, half-imagined elephants, and such... What?
posted by cmoj at 10:57 AM on August 4, 2016

Alternately define, "realistic."
posted by cmoj at 10:59 AM on August 4, 2016

Probably it's best not to assume that pre-modern paintings are realistic depictions of virtually anything, though.

Romans weren't good at perspective but they were pretty good at food, too.
posted by sukeban at 11:01 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also note the peaches in that painting. See how much yellow they have and how little red, compared to the very red ones you will find on sale today? Stone fruit breeders have bred for red, because people (wrongly) think the red color is a sign of ripeness. In truth, the red color is basically the stone fruit equivalent of a suntan.
posted by jocelmeow at 11:07 AM on August 4, 2016

I read this as, "A painting of Christie sheds new light on how watermelons have changed over time."

...and I thought, sure he's an asshole, but I thought we weren't doing fat jokes?
posted by leotrotsky at 11:13 AM on August 4, 2016

I read somewhere that someone did analysis of suits of armor over time, which of course are built to fit the wearer, and found that European men have been getting taller over the last thousand years.

Armor is a bit biased because only the wealthy could afford it, there's a lot of (sometimes literal) survivor bias with the pieces we still have, and of course it tells us basically nothing about women.

It's easier and more direct to just look at hundreds of medieval skeletons, of which there are plenty, going back much further than plate armor, and across a broad socioeconomic spectrum.

Aside from the obvious flying demons, half-imagined elephants, and such... What?

Well, if you go back to the medieval period, lack of perspective, frequent depictions of mythological or historical figures, and a need to use Big Obvious Symbols (to make art accessible to the illiterate) all combine to make for art that it would be hard to call 'realistic.' That doesn't mean we can't glean interesting details from it. For example, one often sees wooden furniture that was painted, but sometimes wooden furniture is depicted with visible wood grain and coloration, suggesting that furniture wasn't always painted. The lack of perspective may make it difficult to build an exact replica, but it still tells us something about the general form of the furniture, how it was decorated, and how it was used.

Another example: if you look at enough medieval art it becomes clear that almost no one had chairs (in the sense of a portable seat with a back). In terms of portable furniture, people generally sat on stools (sometimes with arm rests) and benches. This is confirmed by the relatively few surviving bits of furniture we have as well as household inventory lists and wills. In fact, for a long time portable chairs were pretty much exclusively used by queens.
posted by jedicus at 11:19 AM on August 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

What crowns looked like (there are only a couple of surviving medieval English crowns).

I can't find it online at the moment, but I've read that researchers have looked back at depictions of the Crown of St. Stephen in Hungary to try to find out just when the little cross on the top of it got bent over. Here's a more general overview with a picture.

The cross was not meant to be crooked—some unnamed person sloppily stowed the crown in a trunk and bent the crucifix by closing the lid too quickly.

You know, you give somebody ONE JOB.....
posted by gimonca at 11:52 AM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

I love how depictions of Bible stories used to be set in contemporary times - Here's the Annunciation, painted to show Mary as a typical upper class 15th century Dutch woman.
posted by Mchelly at 12:36 PM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Breasts have changed a lot too over the centuries, judging their depiction in paintings.

Though the tradition of not knowing how to draw breasts realistically lives on in superhero comics till this day.
posted by ijsbrand at 12:54 PM on August 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

In terms of ephemeral objects and phenomena that we don't have extensive written or direct tangible evidence of...
Ancient and medieval hairstyles.

This well-researched reverse engineering of the Vestal Virgin "Seni Crines" hairstyle was put up on MeFi a while ago and it is amazing. The rest of Janet Stephens' videos are pretty cool too.
posted by 3urypteris at 1:25 PM on August 4, 2016

Yeah...that whole watermelon thing really falls apart halfway through. It starts off all "wow! This is amazing and you will never see a watermelon like this" and ends up "Yeah well black seeds, and OK so yeah there are still melons like this and not much has changed but just shut UP!"
posted by howfar at 1:39 PM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Petrus Christus' St. Eligius in his workshop, 1449. is feast, his stock is low but interesting. The sale is being made and he have appears to be a security mirror.
posted by clavdivs at 2:59 PM on August 4, 2016

Ugh, I remember that portion size article, which really misunderstood the history of art and what sizes of things in art meant at various times in history. (There was a good post discussing this, somewhere, but I can't find it.)
posted by jeather at 3:41 PM on August 4, 2016

I read this as, "A painting of Christie sheds new light on how watermelons have changed over time."

...and I thought, sure he's an asshole, but I thought we weren't doing fat jokes?

Isn't your comment the fat joke, one that you've given yourself permission to make by telling it in a slightly self-deprecatory fashion?
posted by layceepee at 7:02 PM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Business Insider has an overview of what wild fruit looked like compared to modern forms

For my money the winner is this little guy, which is wild cabbage. Also wild broccoli. And wild cauliflower. And wild Brussels sprouts. And wild kohlrabi. And wild collard.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:29 PM on August 4, 2016