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medieval chest aesthetics
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:21 pm
by OgreBattle
a 12th century chest made from a tree trunk segment (branch nub attached) in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden
Interesting example of a form aytpical of the D&D mimic chests. If you know of any other forms medieval European or elsewhere chests took please share in this thread
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 12:44 pm
by phlapjackage
I thought this thread was going to be about plate armor for women...
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 1:27 pm
by Thaluikhain
I am glad not to have to be the first to made a silly comment like that.
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 7:28 pm
by Username17
Most medieval chests are basically rectangular prisms. Almost none of them have the rounded lid that we put on Mimic pictures.
The ones that have artistic touches rather than just being boxes with or without legs, have religious iconography or geometric symbols on them. And since European medieval religious art was
pretty bad, it mostly doesn't look very good.
This 12th century reliquary chest looks like a school project by 4th graders.
-Username17
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:56 pm
by shinimasu
Fun fact, old religious iconography had a very strict set of aesthetic requirements tenuously rooted in archaic bible fanfiction which is why it all looks incredibly bizarre, but in the same way every time. Like the saints are all drawn with thin noses because in the divine grace of heaven the breath is no longer necessary.
"The faces of the saints have large, almond-shaped eyes, enlarged ears, long thin noses, and small mouths. Icon painters attempt to indicate that each sensory organ, having received the Divine Grace, was sanctified and had ceased to be the usual sensory organ of a biological man."
Not entirely relevant but I always think it's a kind of wild fun fact about weird medieval religious art.
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:01 pm
by angelfromanotherpin
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:51 pm
by infected slut princess
I thought this might have something to do with chainmail bikinis and now I am much less interested.
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 1:11 am
by Shrapnel
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:40 am
by Prak
Only problem is that it conflicts with Devious Devices, so if you try to activate both, some stuff won't show up.
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:36 am
by erik
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 1:35 am
by kzt
shinimasu wrote:Fun fact, old religious iconography had a very strict set of aesthetic requirements tenuously rooted in archaic bible fanfiction which is why it all looks incredibly bizarre, but in the same way every time. Like the saints are all drawn with thin noses because in the divine grace of heaven the breath is no longer necessary.
"The faces of the saints have large, almond-shaped eyes, enlarged ears, long thin noses, and small mouths. Icon painters attempt to indicate that each sensory organ, having received the Divine Grace, was sanctified and had ceased to be the usual sensory organ of a biological man."
Not entirely relevant but I always think it's a kind of wild fun fact about weird medieval religious art.
I did a tour of the British museum with a guide who delighted in comparing works that were believed to be by the same artist done at roughly the same time for secular and religious purposes. Not that there were a lot of examples, as the surviving medieval art is almost all religious, but those that existed showed that the characteristics of religious art were deliberate stylistic choices, not that artists didn't understand perspective or other such arguments. Old religious art looks the way it looks because that's how it was supposed to look, not because they couldn't make it more realistic.
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 12:24 pm
by erik
Are we sure there wasn’t one influential artist who couldn’t paint people for shit so he made up excuses for their appearance and those excuses became rules?
I’m imagining a medieval Rob Liefield explaining the holiness of extra pockets, teeth and abs. And the perils of human sized feet.
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 2:26 pm
by Hicks
Leifield, in the year of our Lord 1058, wrote:"The saints, unencumbered by sin and so ready to meet god in heaven, are so light that only the tips of their atrophied feet touch the ground."
