Jesus, in paintings,

never looks cheerful, always looks thin,
a bit gaunt, sometimes emaciated, his skin
colour that of the painter's countrymen*.

But his mother is quite a different
kettle of fish - almost always simpering
teenage soft porn.  So I was pleased
that a Valencian furniture-restorer
gave some earthiness to a copy
of a painting by Murillo (a painter of the Sentimental
School of art) which he volunteered to restore
(for a fee).




On the left you can see
the original (copy of the) cute little
porn-Queen of Heaven,
and on the right, the two more-convincing
(if badly-painted) imaginings of the restorer.

Why would Jesus' mother have conformed
to some European male fantasy ?  Why would
she not have been 'ugly', scrawny from hunger,
perhaps even bruised by
her fraught relationship with her husband ?

more here >

*Being bearded and skeletal, though not circumcised,
 I was once proclaimed Saviour
as I gave suck to a sweet and impassioned
(perhaps over-wrought, too-religious)
young man in a corner of Venice at night.