Ok, it's either post this, or clean the Pit of Despair. Sooo...
Five Unintentionally Horrifying Classical Paintings. Or: Anatomy Gone Wrong.
Now, in many cases the distortions might have been intentional. In fact, out of these five paintings, there's only one that I'm certain is a purely a case of artist error. However, I don't think any of these paintings are supposed to be as weird and creepy as they come off because of the screwy anatomy.
Dead Christ, by Andrea Mantegna c1490
First off, there's a lot of technical details that are really nice in this painting, and the artist gets major props for making Christ look very corpse-like. I'd also give Mantegna props for making him look Middle Eastern, except that I suspect he was actually going for Spanish. However, this is a wonderful example of how to NOT do foreshortening. Now, I'm not sure if maybe Mantegna had objections to making Christ's feet bigger than his head, but as the entire painting is done so very realistically with such attention to detail, I'm inclined to think that Mantegna was doing the thing where you try to make the figure look "normal", regardless of what position it's in.
So we all know that the feet should look smaller than the head, because generally peoples heads are a lot closer to our eye level. When you're trying to draw a setup, like this one, where they actually appear larger, you're going to be fighting this little voice saying "No, that's not right". Mantegna lost, and by doing so drastically flattened the image, so that I feel like poor Christ is about two feet long and rather deformed.
Grande Odalisque, by Jean-Auguste Ingres 1814
Ok, now this was done entirely on purpose. Ingres had a Thing for backs. Seriously, the man was obsessed, and in this painting he went a little crazy, decided that the model's back just wasn't long enough, and added some vertebrae. If you imagine what she'd look like standing up it's a little worrying, especially as the curve of her spine is a bit too perfect, and makes me feel like it'd be kinda floppy.
Isenheim Alterpiece, by Matthias Grunewald c1510
The thing about this painting is that it's supposed to be comforting. Grunewald painted this for the Isenheim hospital that cared for victims of leprosy, which Grunewald depicted Christ as having. Apparently the idea was for the patients to contemplate about how their fate could be worse, as at least they weren't being crucified.
Madonna with the Long Neck, by Parmigianino 1534
Stretchy figures was more or less the defining trait of Mannerism, which is why I dislike most of the paintings from that movement. I think they were trying to improve the figure, putting aesthetic concerns about accuracy, but it doesn't really work for me. Instead of looking at these paintings and thinking about how graceful Madonna's neck looks, I can't help but think she might be related to those aliens in one of the Star Wars prequels (my brain just failed at remembering any of the names, including the specific movie title :headdesk:). Also, like the Odalisque above, imagine what she'd look like if she tried to walk. Not to mention a rather terrifying baby on her lap.
Virgin and Child with Angels by Jean Fouquet c1450
It took me forever to find this one, as I've always thought of it as "The boob job gone horribly wrong" painting while forgetting the artist/title, and you can't exactly search that in Google. Somehow I doubt this artist had ever actually seen real live uncorsetted breasts. This is a good example of why life drawing is a good thing.