hortense mancini seduced an english princess

…i dont thing I’ve ever seen this style with people smiling…

The reason it feels so post-modernist and odd to see wide smiles in this style is because showing teeth in classical art was considered lurid and too openly sexual (kinda like nipples in 2020 cough). Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun caused waves as a neoclassical painter in 1787 because her self-portrait featured her smiling with lips parted and showing a peek of her teeth. Since Francisco Soria Aedo was active around the 1930′s it was no longer an issue to show teeth in general yet it still serves as a subversion of the classical ‘look’.

I’m absolutely reeling over the 14th century Italian historian who described the plague pits with multiple layers of dead bodies and dirt as being like a lasagna

“At every church, or at most of them, pits were dug, down to the water-table, as wide and deep as the parish was populous; and therein, whosoever was not very rich, having died during the night, would be shouldered by those whose duty it was, and would either be thrown into this pit, or they would pay big money for somebody else to do it for them. The next morning there would be very many in the pit. Earth would be taken and thrown down on them; and then others would come on top of them, and then earth on top again, in layers, with very little earth, like garnishing lasagne with cheese.” 

what are my masc options for this style

some of you never had an intense homoerotic years-long friendship in your early to mid teens that culminated in a dramatic friend breakup and it shows.

a mug that says “don’t talk to me until i’ve analyzed my dreams”

my funeral is cancelled. or better yet, transformed. when the people come, it will be into an empty chapel. as the last one of them enters, the blinds will be pulled down over the windows, the door locked. every single straight person i knew is forced to sit through two hours, twenty minutes and thirty four seconds of maurice (1987). i am there as well, tucked up in my comfy little coffin, dressed in a reasonable edwardian fashion. i laugh as they slide the lid on. my mother is there, and she is crying.

my roman history professor went off on a tangent about Nero’s assassination attempts on Agrippina and they are the greatest thing I ever heard.