THE BOOK OF
GIANTS
Naked ladies start RenaissanceThe Classics stir things up
Chapter 3
zFinding excuses for painting naked ladies became a major quest of the Renaissance.
2It would have been aaheretical to paint a lot of pictures of naked lady saints,
3aWhich were practically the only famous ladies anyone knew about,
4And so the Giants of the Renaissance rediscovered the “Classics,”
5Which was the Renaissance word for the old Greek and Roman stuff.
6The Classics turned out to be pretty perfect for what the Giants had in mind,
7Because Christians didn’t get nearly as hot under the collar about pictures of naked bGreek and Roman goddesses as they did about naked pictures of the cVirgin Mary.
8And so all of the schools dipped pretty heavily into the old classic literature,
9dAnd painted lots of pictures of naked Aphrodites and naked Artemises and naked Heras and even, now and again, a naked Apollo,
10eAnd quite by accident stumbled on a bunch of other stuff they hadn’t known anything about,
11Like science,
12And philosophy,
13And history,
14And comedy,
15And tragedy.
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Chapter 3 / 16