Why this 15th-century 'Jesus-lamb' painting is creeping people out

Slow news day? There's nothing creepy about it.

If you saw the unrestored vs. the restored, something happened. Something not good.

The eyes are completely different. Another fuck up job.

The eyes are completely different now because a restorer centuries ago fucked up Jan van Eyck's original intentions. The art world has agreed that what we're seeing now is what Van Eyck originally painted the lamb to look like.

ewwwww

I’m not seeing it

Looks like a Splice creature

Is this another one of those seeing Jesus in a plate of spaghetti things?

"He has His Father's eyes!"

Jan van Eyck is brilliant and every one of his paintings is arresting. But beyond that, it says more about the "spooky" state of stupid people than about anything "spooky" in an otherwise extraordinary painting.

Jesus was the "Lamb of God," correct? Why would portraying the lamb with a halo and as somewhat human given this context be even remotely surprising?

Stupid clickbait article.

I was expecting a variation on "man with hardon in the camel" thing.

What's creepy about it as that they eyes are anatomically incorrect, deliberately so. A sheep's eyes are far over on the side of its skull, to give it the huge range of peripheral vision that a prey animal needs, if it wants any hope of escaping predators. The Lamb of God has eyes in the front of the skull like a human, which certainly draws the viewer's attention to its gaze, but which is physically impossible with a normal herbivore's skull.

BTW all predators have eyes flat on the front of their skulls, while prey animals have eyes on the side of their skulls. Humans have evolved to be predators, even if they can live on things other than meat.

It is a bit hard to "get" if you don't know what the pre-restored version looked like. Here is a side by side.

But the article says that the restoration involved removing changes made by later artists, my guess is that the later artist thought the Lamb of God's front-facing eyes were creepy, and painted them over. And put proper anatomically correct sheep's eyes on the damn thing.

So I suppose that Van Eyck thought that the weird human-like eyes would get people's attention and make them pray harder because they were creeped out by the staring. But well. Not all ideas are good ones.

Who does this remind me of...?

It's no ordinary sheep, it's the Lamb of God, Jesus in lamb form. That a C15 painting (by an artist who did not want for technical skill or the ability to depict anatomy) should depict the figure as something a bit more special than a run of the mill lamb isn't surprising. That the image was lost to earlier retouchings and restorations isn't surprising: heavy accumulations of soot from candles and incense would be expected, as would multiple attempts of varying competency to clean and refresh the work.

Gen-X and Millennials tend to find proclaim anything the lest bit out of the ordinary as "spooky", weird in an unsettling and eerie way. A kitchen that isn't all white? Spooky! A bar in what used to be a hat factory? Scary! The craze for ghost hunters and paranormal investigators and endless Instgram sites about abandoned houses (2/3 of which are obviously lived in and maintained, they're just "spooky" Victorian architecture, or have ivy or large trees in the yard. Spooky! Scary! Creepy!

It's like watching a Scooby Doo episode, only that bunch was braver.

It's not a fuck up, people, it's been restored to the way it looked originally. In the comments on that Twitter thread someone linked to an article stating that the lamb was repainted in 1550 to cover the freakier face, and they've removed the repainting and put it back the way it was.

Ba!

Is it Irish? They’re fecking obsessed with lamb.

[quote]t's not a fuck up, people

yes, hon. r4 already told us

Come on, wussies, our 21st C mystic lamb is far creepier.

Christianity is creepier.

I make that same face to a new client when they ask me to do something that won’t look good.

Satan?

r14 The only one with an ounce of brains. The complaint is about the restoration, not the picture itself