every neoclassical/early romantic piece of art is the dream honestly like

hang out in this rose garden with your girlfriend while she dumps flower petals on you. nice

alternatively hang out with your whole squad of nymph gfs in some water. just you and your gal pals, and this guy i guess. letting your tiddies hang out and all that

take a nap on these pillows surrounded by beautiful ancient frescoes, what’s not to love

tiddies out, nap game on, divine boyfriend, not a care in the world. these ladies have it so good

Dressed in gorgeous flowing clothes, hair game on point, sitting on warm marble by the seaside, responding ambiguously to yet another handsome suitor’s advances

h*ck yes

I love this era so much.

Napping on outdoor furniture that somehow never gets musty, and it’s warm enough to wear a gauzy nightie.

I swear to god they’re so dramatic. Even in art history they read into what an apple or fly means like BICH maybe they’re just in the painting chilling. Y DOES IT NEED A MEANING

Yo, makes me laugh that you say this. Because you’re actually right

At the time artists started painting still life (early renaissance), painters didn’t bother with meanings at all. It was a technical exercise. Seeing how good their techniques were

But painting is expensive as fuck and you gotta pay for pigments and shit, so you had to be able to sell your shitty still life, to the people who pay for your pigments and shit. But they didn’t want still life paintings, because it was… just food….. They wanted Jesus and bible scenes and such. Not apples and shit. Because rich people loved religion. And were pretentious as fuck. Why have an apple painting at home when you can have men freaking out over zombie Jesus

So artists were like ok, see, you don’t get it. The apple refers to the original sin, and all the fruits represent your wealth and such. But the skull’s there to remind you that your wealth doesn’t matter, you’ll die someday anyway

Because that was a popular thing at the time, being rich but having symbolic stuff that remind you that you’ll die someday despite being rich. Rich people were weird. And pretentious

So painters BULLSHITTED all that symbolic stuff around the things they put in their still life paintings to make the boring painting exercises appealing to the gullible (and pretentious) rich people that commissioned them. And rich people gobbled it aaaalllllll up

And that’s how we still have still life paintings from most famous renaissance artists today and that they’re in such good condition, because still life paintings became THE shit amongst rich people and they bought them and kept them at home. Instead of remaining stuck in a dusty, shitty painting workshop, to be forgotten beneath tons of other stuff and rot

And there was this whole lexicon and symbolism dictionary created around still life paintings at the time, like each object was meant to represent something and there began to be conventions and stuff

But they only ever were technical painting exercises

It never was that deep