Creepy Baby Faces in Art Museums

I enjoy visiting museums. Whether they feature art, fossils, planes, etc., I always enjoy going and taking in new information. Last summer, I was in Washington, D.C., and my family decided to visit the National Gallery of Art and George Washington’s Home at Mount Vernon. Both experiences were loaded with great information, but I found one thing particularly strange and creepy. As I looked at the art, I wondered why the babies and children in the paintings looked so creepy.

I couldn’t help but laugh and snap photos of all the creepy babies in the art in the museum and Geoge Washington’s home. I’ve since learned that back in the Medieval Era, babies and children were painted creepily like grown men to remind people that Jesus is immutable and unchanging. Also, they didn’t know much about children's anatomy in the Medieval Era. Artists would paint children's and babies' faces the same way they painted adults.

This also translated to the real world when babies and children were often given an adult-sized portion of medicine. After a few hundred years, even though people had learned more about children's anatomy, some still painted babies and children like adults. They viewed the children as adults and wanted to represent the kids as if they were as old as the adults. Children’s literature is fairly recent, and childhood was not always looked at as it is today.

The creepy baby faces in art museums make me grateful that we have phones in the modern day, so kids look like kids and not adults.

I may have never thought I would be creeped out by a painting of a baby, but here we are. What’s something creepy you’ve encountered (like when you’re at a grandparent's house or when thrift shopping)? Let me know, and always remember to keep on shivering.