Unless you’re an obsessive conspiracy theorist, or just someone who is really fascinated in Illuminati shiznit, you probably never looked twice at the paintings of the old masters. Well, they are The Old Masters, what shenanigans could they be up to in those days?
But these legendary painters were still human, and sometimes, they just couldn’t resist planting little “Easter Eggs” in their works that would baffle/enrage/amuse the generation they are in and the generations to come.
Here are 5 Easter Eggs hidden in works of art that you never would have guessed:
- Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment
One of the greatest painters of all time (who had the honor of having a turtle named after him), Michelangelo is probably best remembered for his works in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In 1534, a dying Pope Clement VII commissioned him to paint a fresco on the altar wall of the chapel. That fresco was The Last Judgment:
Pictured: Oblation run (with women)
The fresco was scandalous in its unabashed depiction of nudity (which includes a hunky and beardless Jesus Christ), and it enraged Cardinal Biago da Cesena, the Pope’s Master of Ceremonies. The Cardinal went so far as to say that the painting is more suited to a brothel.
The Body of Christ (or Christ, what a body!)
Michelangelo flipped Biago off by sticking his mug into the body of Minos…
My Anaconda…DOOOOOOONNNNN’T!
…complete with the ears of a jackass and a snake about to give him the most venomous….you get the idea.
- Peter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs
Mr. Elder painted a whole lot of butts you’d think he was living it up in the 21st century and making a killing illustrating butt-themed songs: Bootylicious, My Humps…ugh, I’m not really well-versed in pop music.
His Netherlandish Proverbs is like a demented game of Where’s Waldo featuring butts.
Let’s zoom in on the left:
What the hell? The guy’s sh*tting on the world…THE WORLD!
That man must be so angry. But the guy below must have some MAJOR beef with his neighbor:
I ran out of toilet paper and I don’t give a sh*t!…oh wait, I do.
And these two REALLY, REALLY has to go:
“I told you we shouldn’t have gone to Taco Bell!”
And then, there’s this guy:
Happy Halloween!
It was unsettling, but then I remembered Mr. Elder is from the Netherlands (capital: Amsterdam). He must be into some really potent stuff back then. Yeah, that explains it.
- Various Monks’ Illuminated Manuscripts
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had the monopoly on education. If you want an education, you either become a priest or a monk. Needless to say, it is restricted to guys.
The monks were in-charge of preserving the world’s knowledge through making beautiful, handwritten illuminated manuscripts. They literally spend years of their lives slaving away and being guardians of recorded human history
However, it turns out that kind of job can be quite boring at times, and so these men of God found a way of entertaining themselves. It turns out they were not above behaving like medieval fratboys:
The expression on his face is totally understandable as he is sitting in front of a giant poop.
Dickbutt’s cousin: Facebutt.
Ugh, diarrhea hit! Good thing I got my shield.
The ram above looks strangely apologetic though. And then, this:
I don’t know what is going on, nor do I want to.
- Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
A familiar site in Filipino dining rooms, the painting was so commonplace that you never would have noticed anything fascinating about it until the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code wherein it was postulated that the one sitting beside Jesus is not the apostle John, but actually Mary Magdalene. But I digress.
Pictured: A Filipino dining room decoration staple. Not pictured: Big-ass Spoon and Fork.
Ever the consummate Renaissance man, it is no surprise that Leonardo’s painting is hiding a…
…a musical score!
The passage in the Bible which says that Jesus broke the BREAD (singular) should have clued one in that something else is going on in this painting. It turns out that the bread scattered about and the hands of the apostles correspond to notes of a musical arrangement.
- Michelangelo’s Zechariah
A good chunk of Michelangelo’s life had been spent making art for Popes of the Catholic Church. Pope Julius II was Michelangelo’s first papal patron, and he was commissioned to create the former’s grandiose tomb.
Michelangelo then abandoned his other projects and focused on the task at hand, which included an exhausting year of moving marble from Carrara to Rome. Unfortunately, for all his efforts, the Pope suddenly stopped work on the tomb. This obviously angered Michelangelo, and so when the Pope commissioned him again to paint over 500 square meters of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he retaliated by painting Julius into the body of the prophet Zechariah:
“I’m gonna read the last chapter. I don’t like being surprised by twist endings.”
Nothing seems wrong with the painting, but on closer inspection, one of the cherubs is making a rude hand gesture:
“The guy beside me just flipped the prophet…er, Pope off!”
Placing the thumb between the index and the middle fingers is a gesture called “the fig”, which is essentially a medieval “Screw you!”
Lesson learned: Under no circumstances should you piss a painter off.
