[jwhite]

Maybe watch the video. Artists have to eat, and they relied on patronage and commissions. The church and the nobles were the only ones with the free cash and the motivation to fund artists and their creations for much of the Christian age in Europe, regardless of their looks.

But also: something changed in the 16th century: do you contend that the monarchs suddenly got uglier to the point that artists didn't want to paint them anymore?

[gfedtbyby]

> do you contend that the monarchs suddenly got uglier

If you focus on the Habsburgs then arguably yes, it did got very bad in that regard. They still managed to find willing painters (even if they possible had to pay them a bit more to soften some of the most visible flaws).

[ausudhz]

> do you contend that the monarchs suddenly got uglier

Yes, because for centuries they were having children with their relatives.

If you studied basic biology you would know that by doing that the gene pool become too small and many physical problems arise (and appearance is only one of them).

Incest, according to many sources, was the cause of collapse of the Egyptian empire. The latest pharaoh had all sort of problems (and mental problem was one of then too)

[darkclouds]

> But also: something changed in the 16th century:

The youtube video opens with the fact the Bruegel in the opening scene was the first reproducible print.

The reproducible print is mentioned again at 76seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC-cyrIq-qI&t=76s

Other contributory factors include the rise of the mercantile middle class, and a push back against religions and royalty as they typically controlled the wealth and kept people in servitude in various ways.

Something not mentioned was this period was also the little ice age [1], when Maunder[2] and Dalton[3] first started observing the sun, noticing a decline in sunspots over the usual 11 year solar cycle[4], a year without summer[5] due to a volcanic explosion that threw so much ash into the atmosphere, it partially obscured the sun, causing crops and wild plants to die back around the world causing massive famines and death in some parts of the less developed world.

The extent of the artic ice reach was so great inuits could walk across the ice and then kayak across the north sea to Scotland[6]. Cod stocks require 7 DegC waters moved south in the North Sea making fishing harder and with todays higher sea temperatures, forcing fish north, which brings to mind was this a factor for Brexit?

The rise of the Mercantile middle class was due to the traders sailing off discovering the world, bringing back exotic crops, picking up new methods to grow crops and improve yields, they helped to stave off hunger and famine when royalty and religion were failing the general population by not providing any solution.

The Catholic church was losing power, as noted with the Avignon papacy when the Catholic church was based in Avignon in France not Vatican city like today[7], The French Revolution, again the peasants were not being looked after due to the poor conditions and so starved and hungry, they revolted killing the French King.

Thats why there were lots of snow and ice depictions, just like frost fairs on the river Thames [8], arguably one of the first offshore tax havens to exist, mainly because the river when it froze provided an area in which to trade which was unregulated by the laws of the land.

A unique trading situation caused by ice.

And so this situation was exploited like a hack to make money.

So did the monarchs get uglier?

Keeping the wealth inside the wider family and peers of similar or same stature, has always caused genetical mutations and reduced genetic variation, inbreeding if you will, but there was much more to paint than just a few wealthy individuals helped along by the printing press.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

[6] https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-europe-news-mys...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs

[JackFr]

You’re kind of all over the place here.

The Avignon papacy lasted from 1309-1376. The “Year without a summer” was 1816. The French Revolution was 1789.

Your source on Inuits landing in Scotland seems to conclude that it either didn’t happen or was possibly the result of European kidnapping.

I guess I’m not sure what your point is.

[brabel]

European history is such a rabbit hole, the more you read the more interesting things you find to learn more later.

> The Catholic church was losing power

I've been reading exactly about that... and it's mind blowing that the divide between Catholics and Protestants was what initiated the Eighty Years' War[1] (as mentioned in the video). That War was followed by an even bigger one later, the Thirty Years' War[2] (from 1618 to 1648), the biggest conflict in Europe up until that time (it was huge, parts of today Germany lost 50% of their population). That war started with the infamous Defenestration of Prague [3] in which the representatives of Ferdinand (a Habsburg) the new, fervently catholic King of Bohemia (which was a stronghold of Protestantism), were thrown out of the window of the Prague castle (that's how they used to show their strong discontent diplomatically back then)!

I was recently in Prague and made a point to visit that window :D. Quite amazing to think the places where such events took place are still there and anyone can visit it.

Anyway, after the 30 Years' War, the Habsburgs (which controlled a huge chunk of Europe, from Spain to Flanders, Bohemia to Hungary), lost a lot of power, with France and their ally, Sweden, becoming the dominant powers (can you imagine that the Swedes sieged Prague in 1648!??)... which in turn led to many wars later, including wars between Sweden, the Lithuanian Empire, and the Russian Empire which I find fascinating... all of them had big victories at some point, (e.g. Swedes kicked Russian's asses in 1700 in the Battle of Narva[4] -see also this amazing video by HistoryMarche [5] - but got completely destroyed by the Russians in Poltava [6], current-day Ukraine) but at the end of the wars in 1795 [7], Lithuania and its union buddy Poland basically ceased to exist as an independent entity (after hundreds of years of existence, extending from Kyiv to Villnius, Minsk and as far into Russia as Smolensk!), the Swedes losing almost all of their possessions in mainland Europe (like Estonia) and also Finland to the Russians, and France becoming the main power in Western Europe just in time for Napoleon to rise.

And the story goes on, of course, to this day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague#The_...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Narva_(1700)

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JG0W2o8ULs

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Poltava

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland