(04-21-2010, 12:36 AM)DarkKnight Wrote: Get your minds out of the gutter, people! If that was our Lord's penis, it would be circumcised! It's not, so it can't be.
excellent point! Jesus was circumcised. i do not believe the artist was trying to suggest a penis at all. if she wanted to do so subversively, she could have suggested a penis under the loincloth.
you reminded me of something funny. we used to take groups of college students to Italy for a crash course in art history, mostly of the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic periods. we stayed in Florence and made day trips to Siena and other cities and an overnight trip to Rome.
the first year we did this, a Jewish South African student who had been traveling around Europe alone for a year was staying in our pensionato and often tagged along with our group, happy to be with people who spoke English. (it probably didn't hurt that most of the students were girls, either.)
one day he went to the Accademia, where the David and many of Michelangelo's other sculptures are on exhibit. when he got back, he came into the lobby area where a few of us were sitting and asked "Tell me, professor, wasn't David supposed to be Jewish?"
there was a pause while we processed this information and then a couple of us burst out laughing. Michelangelo's "David" is, of course, not circumcised but we had never thought about the contradiction with Judaism. another year, a Jewish faculty couple went with the group and we told them the story, to which she said that was the first thing she noticed when she saw the statue. of course, her sons were circumcised in a
bris, which would stand out in your mind like a christening.