One of my proudest memories as an art historian was when my sister exclaimed in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, “Hey, isn’t that tapestry based on the Raphael painting in the Vatican.”  She was right, and in my rush to see the “important” highlights of the Palace, I would have missed a true masterpiece.  Happy birthday sis!

Based on Raphael’s Vision of the True Cross from the Room of Constantine, The Vatican Palace, 16th century, tapestry.  Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence (Photo by debstah1)

Raphael with Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle, Vision of the True Cross, Sala di Costantino, 1513-after 1520, fresco.  The Vatican Palace

Why is this memory so incredible?  Fine out below.

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Nikolaj Abildgaard, Hamlet Showing his Mother the Ghost of his Father, c. 1778, oil on canvas.  Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

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Today I’m going to pick on one of my favorite artists of the late 15th to mid-16th century who had a penchant for the bizarre, the colorful, and, um, male glutes.  He is Luca Signorelli and all of the painting’s featured in this entry are religious in subject matter, yet they blatantly show some pretty prominent male backsides.

By now you know that I do not consider tights to be a substitute for pants, despite the current and seemingly undying trend in women’s fashion, but the paintings below by Signorelli highlight historically acceptable acts of pantslessness.  Still, tights are NOT pants! [Unless of course the ass that wears them is well-toned, and how often does that happen?!?]

Luca Signorelli, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, c. 1498, oil on panel.  Pinacoteca Comunale, Città di Castello

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Italians do not have an innate sense for high fashion.  Sure, Milan is a recognized fashion capital of the world and yes, Florence does have Pitti Uomo and of course Italians can pull of salmon-colored pants, brown leather shoes with a navy suit, and wearing sunglasses indoors at night.  But after living in Florence for a year I encountered time and time again numerous examples of Italian fashion train wrecks, which I referred to affectionately as TWs.  And yes, TWs exist in works of art and today’s entry is dedicated to one of my favorites.

Ravenna is one of the most charming cities because there you’ll discover some of the most beautiful mosaics from the 6th century.  One particular mosaic in the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo shows the three magi / wise men bringing gifts to the Christ child.  Each king wears the most outrageous patterned tights, which as repeat visitors of WTF Art History will know is a fashion trend that I greatly dislike.  Their outfits would make awesome Halloween costumes but are not suitable for daily dress.  Certainly in the context of the mosaics the tights suggest the magi’s exotic/foreign origin and at the end of the day I do actually very much like the overall use of color, modeling, and patterning.

The Three Magi, c. 500-526, mosaic.  Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

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I am continually disturbed by the current trend in women’s fashion for wearing tights as pants.  As I’ve said before, the back side that you’d like to see in tights seldom wears them!  What a predicament!  But the Tights Are NOT Pants manifesto gives me hope that this fad will die out when women realize that there are very few historically acceptable examples of tight-wearing.  Today’s entry is the next in line about tights in art history and while the culprit does exhibit proper tight-wearing etiquette (he’s a circus performer), I feel it my responsibility to spread the word that indeed tights are NOT pants!

Walt Kuhn, Top Man, 1931, oil on canvas.  Huntington Library and Art Collections, San Marino, California

I was elated on a recent trip to the Huntington Library and Art Collections to stumble upon Walt Kuhn’s portrait of Vittorio Falconi, the “top man” choreographer and performance director in a regional circus.  You can imagine how many visitors did a double-take or uttered a slight giggle when they saw the life-sized portrait of a burly Italian wearing a pink leotard.  He could almost pass for a back-up dancer in Beyoncé’s Single Ladies video (a la Justin Timberlake et al on SNL).  Kuhn’s portrait of Falconi is one of several that the artist made of circus performers, and considering that the painting was made during the Great Depression lends insight that Kuhn sought to capture the psychology not only of Falconi but also of American entertainment.

Also in the Huntington collection (but not on view) is Kuhn’s sketch for the Falconi portrait.

Walt Kuhn, Top Man, 1931, watercolor and graphite on paper.  Huntington Library and Art Collections, San Marino, California

Kuhn applied paint to the final portrait with thick brush strokes and subtly modeled his use of pink, black, and flesh tones to create the overall composition.  Enjoy the detail below and remember that even thought Falconi was a circus performer, tights today are NOT pants!

It doesn’t get much more WTF than that!

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Prior to the development of modernism in the late 19^th century and throughout the 20^th century, one of the chief concerns of painters was mimesis, or mimicry/imitation of nature and three-dimensional reality.  Certainly painters prior to the modern era were also concerned with color, line, and form but modernism critiques the per-modern notion that a flat canvas can portray a three-dimensional reality.

For a painter, three-dimensional reality can be achieved through linear or aerial perspective and foreshortening, in addition to trompe l’oeil, the ability to fool the eye.  A masterful painting by Louis-Léopold Boilly demonstrates the possibility of trompe l’oeil to mesmerize and even tempt the viewer to question the limits of visual and spatial reality.  At the center of his painting, we find a man, the operatic tenor Jean Elleviou, wearing an historically appropriate pair of tights.  Today’s entry looks at not only a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil but also the popular theme of Tights Are NOT Pants!

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Collection of Drawings with Self-Portrait and Portrait of Elleviou, c. 1800, oil on canvas.  Private collection

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Attributed to the Berlin Painter, Attic Red Amphora (detail), Athens, Greece, 480-470 B.C., terracotta.  The J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Villa, Malibu, California

Continuing with the theme of Tights Are NOT Pants, I’d like to introduce you to a Scythian warrior (no, I am not referring to the dark lords of Star Wars).  The Scythians were a mountainous people whose territory spanned from the Black Sea to modern day Kazakhstan (including parts of the other “stan” countries to the south).  You’ll almost always recognize a Scythian by his brightly colored or patterned tights!  And check out the bikini-style undies he wears over his tights!!  So while today it is a heinous offense to wear tights as pants, the Scythians were able to wear them with pride (despite the fact that the tights often signaled barbarism when depicted in Greek art).  Enjoy!

Check out both sides of the amphora below.

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A little over a week ago I took a jab at Napoleon Bonaparte for wearing tights, an easy task considering he was a short French man, right?  Well in all fairness, our first president offers some great tights are NOT pants moments as well.  Thanks are in order to my friend Sarah for telling me about the first painting of George Washington that I’ll discuss, which happens to be one of the most iconic of Washington.  It shows the leader crossing the Delaware River in the dead of winter during the American Revolution in 1776.  Check out his crotch in those tight pants…

Emmanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This odd detail seems to portray a tear in the general’s pants, revealing his awkwardly colored balls underneath.  Now you’re interested right?  WTF?!?  Most likely those dangling beads hang from a tie on his belt.  Still, they are rather oddly placed.

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Moose Knuckle Is NEVER OK: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Napoleon Bonaparte in the Uniform of the First Consul, 1804, oil on canvas.  Musée des Beaux-Arts, Liège, Belgium; Antonie-Jean Gros, Napoleon as First Consul, 1802, oil on canvas.  Musée National de la Légion d’Honneur, Paris ; Jacques-Louis David, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812, oil on canvas.  The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

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Actually, this post is not really about tights as pants because the individual whose ass you see below was a dancer and therefore he adheres to the tights are not pants manifesto.  But this post does combine my interest in calling out inappropriate tight-wearers with my love for the music of the Scissor Sisters and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.  Ok that was a lot to process.  If you’re already feeling the sweat begin to reach your epidermis then you’re in the right frame of mind.  If not, keep reading/looking.

  Déjà vu?Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Reed, 1980, gelatin silver print.  Scissor Sisters, Night Work, album release June 28, 2010

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