Sexy weasels in Renaissance art | Hacker News Reader

Sexy weasels in Renaissance art

ridiculouslyinteresting.com

173 pointsokfine32 comments

Super interesting article.

> Also, I refuse to put up one of those obnoxious “SIGN UP NOW!” pop-ups on the site, because I find them ridiculously annoying

I can't express enough gratitude for this, though.

I found it ingratiating.

I didn't realise that most of the sexy weasels would be dead. :(

It's been hundreds of years, weasels just don't have that kind of lifespan...

When I was a kid, the Leonardo painting was called "Lady with a Weasel". Now they claim it is "Lady with an Ermine". Most probably, though, it is "Lady with a Polecat-Ferret Hybrid".

It's a polecat. No doubt about it.

Leonardo was, among other things, the period's best anatomist. He captured, in charcoal, light bouncing off water like no artist, literally, ever before. He came up with concepts for bridges, armored cars, clocks, and scuba gear. If he wanted to, he could paint an ermine. He chose not to.

Cecilia Gallerani was the 15 year old Kim Kardashian of the era. After multiple incidents with the teenager critiquing Leonardo's ability ("but it does not look like me" she complained - "well yeah" he thought "in reality your chin is much less pronounced and your nose more so"), invitations to pretentious salons she would preside over which he could not decline, and other confrontations with the slippery social climber he decided (at great personal risk) to pull the wool over her eyes a bit and paint her with an animal more inline with her behavior.

Her lover (and Leonardo's patron) did likely see through all this. Ludovico Sforza was a savvy guy, and having gone on his share of hunts (not to mention being a member of the Knights of Ermine), also would know the difference between a spade and a shovel as it were, but his life was further complicated by a marriage to a different 15 year old later that year. The best he could do was come up with a pretense to not show the painting too widely amongst the cognoscenti - which is exactly what happened.

Very interesting, thanks! But that would make the explanation from the article false, wouldn't it? If it's not an ermine, then it cannot be a "message" to Cecilia's lover, a Knight of Ermine. This secret message is lost if both Leonardo and Ludovico know it's not an ermine but a polecat...

(As an unrelated aside, polecat-ferrets are forever linked in my mind to Sredni Vashtar, that wonderful short story by Saki!)

Not false exactly - I think the "Lady with Ermine" interpretation is still the literal reading of the painting. The white coat speaks to that not to mention the current owners have incentives to promote it as such. Reading it as "Obnoxious Merchant's Girl Pretending to be a Lady Seated with a Polecat Pretending to be an Ermine" would be subtext inadmissible without further explanation which I attempted to provide above. Namely: means, motive, and opportunity.

If one does want to be literal about it, the painting was made at the same time as his Vitruvian Man studies. Relative body proportions would have been top of mind for Leonardo at this time. That "ermine" is the same length (if not quite a bit longer) than her arm. Assuming she's conservatively 140cm tall (4'6") - her arm and the "ermine" would be 55cm long (1'9") (or more!). A quick cross reference with typical sizes for these creatures[1] - shows that it's just barely above the size of a typical polecat but more than twice the size of any stoat (an ermine in non winter colors). Proportionally it’s the difference between a chipmunk and a squirrel.

Put another way, if that actually is an ermine, then that makes her 75cm (2'6") tall. Just cross reference the size with the ermine in portrait of Elizabeth I below it. If he explicitly called it a polecat (a creature more associated with its foul smell and ugly temperament than any true nobility - that Sredni Vashtar story is great btw - thanks for that) he would have been out of a job. Or worse. This is the era of Machiavellian politics.

He may have chosen to sleight her in this way because he could plausibly deny it to her face "Well, yes of course that's an ermine, it just happens to be a realllly strong ermine - it's a symbol for your lover, the Knight of Ermine, you see" or if pressed by Ludovico to reveal the 'true' message: "Ok, fine you got me, this creature may have a white coat but it is not true nobility. As you would know my lord, what with her being formerly engaged to your rival and all."

From a Machiavellian perspective, Ludovico may not have cared one way or another. She was the daughter of a very wealthy merchant betrothed to his rival. By taking her as his concubine he deprived his rival of access to capital.

[1] http://deskarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/012615_1236_...

I always saw it labeled as "Lady with Ermine", but since they are the same thing both are fine.

Although Wikipedia says the term Ermine is used more when talking about an all-white stoat.

Usually you see the white fur-lined cloaks referred to as Ermine. And in heraldry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermine_(heraldry)

With the fur, for some reason it was fashionable to keep a black-tipped tail, so you see in contemporary paintings and in heraldic devices the periodic black spots in a field of white.

Once you see it you can't unsee it, apparently.

One wonders what other bizarre cultural subtexts we're missing in other historical art periods.

Michaelangelo's "creation of Adam" depicts God as a human brain. Apparently nobody noticed untill the 90s. It's hard not to see it when you see it. A lot of fun interesting possibilities for deep metaphor.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CA4SF_GUkAAiJ5S.jpg?format=jpg&n...

PS: reason for the downvotes? just curious.

I believe this is a case of pareidolia.

While I believe it is credible, Michaelangelo would have seen dissected corpse, I don't think a brain cross section would have been that detailed at that time.

Looking at Da Vinci sketch below, it does not look that similar anymore :

https://neurosciencenews.com/da-vinci-brain-knowledge-11070/

Never noticed that, thank you for pointing it out. There is a lot of evidence for Michaelangelo dissecting corpses with the tacit approval of the church, it made his art stand out substantially because of his knowledge of the muscles and bones underlying the skin and the fabric.

I share your curiosity: Who on earth would downvote this? Quirky, interesting new titbit for our collection of trivia and learned matter, thank you.

Probably because of the source (Cracked.com, a humor site, albeit one which does often share interesting knowledge in a quirky way). Downvoters could be reading the post as a joke rather than in earnest.

Apparently it is a legitimate published theory, as noted in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam#Portrayal... So is the theory that the shape represents the postpartum uterus, which seems thematically more fitting.

That would be my fault. I just googled for an image.

HN is a strange place

Snails, for one: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-were-medieval-...

And some others, if you'll excuse the listicle: https://listverse.com/2017/11/29/10-weird-trends-that-keep-s...

I've heard it said that the monks who wrote these manuscripts and inscribed their snail battles, did so as a means of presenting their piety.

In order to understand this one must realise that a monk had very few real enemies in the world - they were above these worldly pursuits. But, monks still had to eat, and tend their gardens in order to do so - and what likes monks gardens more than the monk does?

Why, snails of course.

So when monks were not bent over, copying ancient secrets for future generations to pore over, they were to be found in their gardens, eradicating their mortal enemy the snail, lest the monk be forced to starve to death. To a monk in a tower, engaged in little other than intellectual pursuits, the mightiest foes indeed were the little creatures who could starve the inhabitants of the mightiest holy towers.

So, that's why there are so many snails in the footnotes and margins of history. Because they were the mightiest foe for such humble folk to imagine...

That's very poetically written but I think you might be neglecting the fact that one of the monk's primary duties was (and still is) to lead a life of prayer, and in their worldview this is very much an ongoing spiritual battle against Satan and all his demons who are continuously attempting to overthrow the kingdom of God, mostly by tempting the people of the surrounding lands into sin or by allowing their opponents to prevail. Snails are a real threat too, but by no means the only enemy in the mind of an actual practising monk.

> an ongoing spiritual battle against Satan and all his demons who are continuously attempting to overthrow the kingdom of God, mostly by tempting the people of the surrounding lands into sin or by allowing their opponents to prevail

Sure, but that's all make-believe; snails are real.

> Sure, but that's all make-believe

Not from the perspective of many (but not all) monks. I think you're having a theory of mind failure here.

Depending on your religion, they might be equally real. The threat posed by snails might be more immediate, though.

Who's to say the snails aren't agents of Satan? These monks may be fighting actual demons in their gardens.

It's not like old Scratch is a stranger to using animal proxies. His first documented appearance has him in snake form.

These were probably the visual memes of their age and seem to have survived primarily because their patrons were able to pay for them to be immortalized.

Had no idea that dead weasels were used as fashion items.

That is a very interesting website, some freaky stuff on there.

> A zibellino, flea-fur or fur tippet is a women's fashion accessory popular in the later 15th and 16th centuries. A zibellino, from the Italian word for "sable", is the pelt of a sable or marten worn draped at the neck or hanging at the waist, or carried in the hand. The plural is zibellini. Some zibellini were fitted with faces and paws of goldsmith's work with jeweled eyes and pearl earrings, while unadorned furs were also fashionable.

TIL today's fashion really is no dumber than it was 5 centuries ago.

Take note of the name: flea-fur. IIRC, the idea was that fleas, lice, and other parasites would jump onto the fur rather than you.

I doubt it worked, but people weren't any smarter back then, either.

Well, dead mustelids (and vulpines) are still used as fashion items.

The dead animals are martens and the live animals domestic ferrets. The true weasels are tiny.

Obligatory negative HN comment: it's Lorenzo Lotto, not Lorenzo Lorro. This mistake is repeated 4 times in the article!

I find it interesting that the Lynx as a symbol of a childless woman has held into the modern era: cat ladies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com