hortense mancini seduced an english princess

Today’s gender of the day is: Death Note Spoiler

When there’s a new lesbian in town

just stumbled across Francisco Soria Aedo’s work and first off: really good painter, super talented. He mainly did portraits and neoclassical but I really like are his expressions, which do show up in his neoclassical work. lots of people smiling and having fun and it’s just very cute

this is one of my favorites

heres a couple more examples!

…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

Italian Noble Person, staring at a plague pit: My God, this is horrible. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before!

Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, maybe a *bit* peckish: Actually…

“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.” 

Meiko Kaji in Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song (1973)

Y'all, check out this absolute treasure from Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina: a re-bound book that is PHYSICALLY FROM 1814 and even better, someone presumably from the 19th century had VERY STRONG OPINIONS about it and ZERO COMPUNCTIONS ABOUT WRITING IN LIBRARY BOOKS:

"Read some other narrative for this is entirely false." 😲

"Lies"

"Lies Lies Lies a pack of Lies

hurrah for you, you are certainly a judge"

If anyone who knows a lot more about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and it's historiography can shed some light on why our anonymous friend was so incensed by Porter's Narrative--especially these segments in particular--I am literally begging you to chime in!

MAURICE (1987) dir. James Ivory

its almost a new decade i say we all start dressing like this

what are my masc options for this style

im glad u asked!

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.

The boat one has different versions but basically he created a boat designed to collapse and sink and then had a party thrown on it with his mother on board.

It collapsed, but she swam to shore and the idea of a middle aged roman woman clawing her way ashore fucking D-day style is amazing.

A previous attempt was that he rigged her bedroom ceiling to collapse while she was asleep but when it actually did she was out of bed so it just ended up ruining her bed.

My absolute favorite thing about these wacky roman antics was he thought of those instead of just stabbing her because that would be too suspicious and difficult.

nero: looks like the boat sunk according to plan. finally, I’m free of my mother!

agrippina: