Sure, other artists were perfectly capable of sculpting and painting asses, but Michelangelo thoroughly assimilated the prototypes of ancient sculpture, studied the hell out of anatomy and had the whole “crazy genius” mystique about him - so we’re all conditioned to credit him for the canon of the ideal body type. (Art historian Giorgio Vasari once dismissed the work as “a sack of melons.”) Michelangelo Is the Renaissance Bubble Butt Kingīig M. Hercules and Cacus, seen above, is a 15-foot colossus featuring Herc slaying a monster and flexing his cantaloupe-shaped buttocks.
Beefcakes didn’t receive much love in Renaissance-era Florence.
