Saturday, July 23, 2011

And Now for Something Completely Different: Shrimp on the Barbie Jesus

This post is totally random, and it is dedicated to my sister Amy.  Enjoy!

The last time I was in Paris, in February of 2009, my sister Elizabeth took John, my sister Amy, and me to a small museum called the Musee Jacquemart-Andre.  It was a lovely little museum with a fabulous tea room, but the thing that really stood out to Amy and me was a painting, Vierge a l'Enfant by Alessio Baldovinetti.  This was just one of many paintings of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, but there was something special about this baby Jesus, namely, his swaddling.  In the painting, Baby Jesus is wrapped up like a mummy from the armpits down, with a tuft of red fabric where his feet should be.  In other words, he looks like a shrimp.  And so Amy and I gleefully dubbed him "the Shrimp on the Barbie Jesus."

Just in case any one thinks I'm being sacrilegious, I offer you this:

Come on, it's Shrimp on the Barbie Jesus!
And since this painting was apparently nowhere else on the Internet, I scanned the postcard that Amy and I bought at the museum gift shop.  So really, I'm doing this for posterity.

And also, it just makes me laugh. 

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