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you're going to the museum and it's great.
你准备去一下博物馆，很好
The guards check your bag so you, I don't know, shoot a painting;
安检人员检查你的包包，以防你朝画作开枪？其实我也不知道为什么
you go up some fancy escalators, you see naked statues.
你乘坐绚丽的扶梯上楼，看到了裸体的雕塑
And then it happens.
接着这种事情就发生了
You see a super ugly Medieval baby.
你看到了一个面目丑陋的中世纪小孩儿
Why do medieval babies look like ugly middle aged men?
为什么中世纪的小孩儿长得跟中世纪长相丑陋的成年人似的？
This baby looks like he wants to tell you to that 'a boat is just a money pit'.
他的模样仿佛是想告诉你“养一艘船太烧钱了”
It might seem like medieval artists were just bad at drawing.
给人感觉好像中世纪的画家画技拙劣似的
But it turns out that babies in medieval art are actually ugly for a reason.
然而，中世纪绘画中的小孩儿长相丑陋其实是有原因的
While there were breakthroughs in anatomy and perspective that happened later in the Renaissance,
虽然中世纪之后的文艺复兴时期解剖学和透视法都有了突破性的进展
ugly medieval babies were an intentional choice before that time.
但在那之前，中世纪绘画中的小孩儿长相丑陋是画家故意为之
If somebody told you to paint like Pablo Picasso and you gave them Norman Rockwell,
如果有人叫你用巴勃罗·毕加索的风格画画，你给他们的却是诺曼·洛克威尔风格的作品
you would have screwed up.
那你可能就把生意搞砸了
And it's the same way for artists working in churches in Italy.
对意大利为教堂工作的画家来说，情况也是一样
It's because most of these babies were depictions of Jesus and Mary.
因为这些小孩儿大多画的是耶稣和圣母玛利亚
They were influenced by the idea of the homunculus, which is Latin for little man.
它们都受到了“homunculus”——拉丁语中的“侏儒”——这一概念的影响
These babies looked like Benjamin Button
这些小孩看着像本杰明·巴顿似的
because philosophers believed Jesus was born perfectly formed and unchanged.
因为哲学家们认为，耶稣生下来就是完全成形且不会改变的形象
The adult Jesus was represented in the baby Jesus.
婴儿耶稣是什么样，成年耶稣就是什么样
Until the Renaissance, when everything changed.
到了文艺复兴时期，一切都变了
Generally, we think of the Middle Ages lasting from around the 5th to 15th century,
通常情况下，我们认为中世纪从5世纪一直延续到了15世纪
and it kind of overlapped the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century.
并且与14世纪萌芽的文艺复兴有一定的重叠
The Renaissance probably began in Florence Italy,
文艺复兴很可能起源于意大利的佛罗伦萨
but it's important to note that it unfolded over centuries and countries
但值得注意的是文艺复兴时期也延续了一个又一个世纪，而且影响了不止一个国家
in a time when everything moved slowly.
而那时一切都进展得很缓慢
So, it wasn't instant beautiful babies everywhere.
所以，不是所有画作上的婴儿都一下子变漂亮了
Still, the change in style did happen, and it happened for a couple of reasons.
然而，风格上的变化的确发生了，而且原因不止一个
Suddenly places like Florence were getting richer and churches weren't the only places that could afford paintings.
突然，佛罗伦萨等地变得富有起来，教堂不再是唯一支付得起画作的地方
People could get their own babies painted,
人们已经有能力付钱给自己的孩子作画
and they wanted them to look like cute chubby babies, not homunculi.
而且他们希望自己的孩子看上去漂亮，胖乎乎的，而不是像个侏儒
And because the Renaissance was all about classics,
其次，文艺复兴最重要的就是传承经典
they looked at Greek and Roman art,
艺术家们纷纷模仿古希腊古罗马的艺术
which was all about idealized forms that ditched the medieval abstraction for beauty.
采用的完全是理想化的艺术形式，抛弃了中世纪对美的抽象加工
Ok, who put that ugly baby there?
好吧，是谁在那儿放了个丑陋的小孩儿的
Anyway, the point is that after the Renaissance cherubs didn't seem out of place,
总而言之，重点是文艺复兴以后， 随着文艺复兴在欧洲的传播
and neither did cuter pictures of baby Jesus as the Renaissance spread through Europe.
人们似乎并没有觉得天真无邪的婴儿和可爱的幼儿耶稣有什么不合适
And it's kinda stayed that way since.
甚至可以说，这种风格还从此固定了下来
We want babies who look like they need their cheeks pinched,
因为我们想看的是看着就让人想捏一捏脸蛋的小宝宝
not their prostates checked.
不是需要检查前列腺的家伙
We want them chubby and cute, and we want babies that fit our ideals.
我们想看的是他们胖胖的可爱的模样，符合我们想象的模样
Because those medieval babies?
因为，那些中世纪的婴幼儿？
They have a face that only a mother can love.
他们长的那张脸，估计只有他们自己的母亲才会喜爱吧
