Most Cursed Medieval Baby Jesus

For several centuries, painters across Europe put the face of a small grown man on an infant, and every single person involved signed it off.

There is a real explanation, which somehow makes the paintings funnier rather than less. Medieval theology held that Christ was perfect and unchanging from the moment of incarnation, so depicting him as a helpless baby was doctrinally awkward in a way nobody wanted to resolve. The solution was the homunculus — a fully formed adult in miniature, complete with a receding hairline and the expression of a man who has just seen the accounts. The convention only broke down during the Renaissance, once painting from live models became standard practice and artists started looking at actual infants. Forty of these are in, and every one hangs in a real museum collection today. Nothing here was painted as a joke, which is the entire reason it works as one.

The images come from Wikimedia Commons, which is why the crops and lighting vary between them — these are museum photographs rather than consistent art book plates. Pick the worst baby. There is genuine competition.