If I could, I would click "like" a thousand more times. I had never heard of the word before, but am now immensely fascinated and must learn everything about this. And I can totally relate to being fascinated with grotesque horror like this, but not really tolerating "modern" horror (i.e. King). Thank you for sharing!!
The fun part of it is that multiple people must have been fascinated by this too and thought "hey, there are a lot of these headless folk wandering around - we should have a name for that! Let's study this." So we're really just following in the footsteps of fellow readers of weird history.
Oh good, not just me then who finds all the religious iconography fascinating. I love going round art galleries and looking at the religious paintings and playing 'guess the saint'. (My husband thinks I'm weird).
Those angels are definitely saying, "OK, he seems pretty cool about the the head thing, so yeah, we're cool too".
I spent a really long time looking at the St Denis group and imagining the conversation. Those angles are SO mellow about the whole thing. Also I was pondering the whole "where to put the halo" part - I'd never thought about artists having to decide that until I read it on wikipedia.
When things like this pop up in artwork: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Last_judgement.jpg
That's from Michelangelo's Last Judgement, where you see this dude (who I think is Bartholomew, now nice and healed up in heaven?) holding the empty-skin-suit (I have NO idea how else to describe it) from St. Bartholomew
You have GOT to ask questions about stuff like that. Because, so deeply weird - and it was a story everyone apparently knew well enough to recognize the skin-suit thing!
omg that is SO great - I can only guess a few of them without checking. I'm really curious about the chick on the right holding something in tongs - a boiled egg? Something creepy?
Also because they all look so alike I'm having an Orphan Black moment. Heh.
Those angels are definitely saying, "OK, he seems pretty cool about the the head thing, so yeah, we're cool too".
When things like this pop up in artwork:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Last_judgement.jpg
That's from Michelangelo's Last Judgement, where you see this dude (who I think is Bartholomew, now nice and healed up in heaven?) holding the empty-skin-suit (I have NO idea how else to describe it) from St. Bartholomew
You have GOT to ask questions about stuff like that. Because, so deeply weird - and it was a story everyone apparently knew well enough to recognize the skin-suit thing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_%28Michelangelo%29#Detail
Damn. It just never gets any less weird for me. My parents had all these coffee table books of this kind of art. Between this stuff and spending hours over The Garden of Earthly Delights I was doomed to be a fan of weirdness.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights)
http://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/master/legend3/3virgin.html
Also because they all look so alike I'm having an Orphan Black moment. Heh.
Oh crap I knew it would end up being the creepy answer!