There’s something about this time of year that make us wamt to put on a nice, warm coat and visit a museum on a rainy day. One can see some pretty amazing stuff while wandering the halls of these institutions. There are Picassos, Rembrandts, Dalis, Monets, van Goghs, creepy babies . . .

You heard that right—creepy babies. All of you art lovers out there know exactly what I’m talking about!

I can’t count how many times I’ve stood in awe before a medieval painting and wondered (sometimes aloud, I’m embarrassed to say): “What is up with that baby’s face?!”

Let’s be real, most of these infants have faces that only a mother could love. They look like this . . .

And this . . . And that . . . See what I mean?

Now that we’ve established that the faces on these medieval children are nightmare-inducing, let’s get into the why.

According to Vox, at this time in history, there was a certain precedent that artists were expected to follow. Since this was a stage when religion had a strong influence over most of the paintings and sculptures in Europe, there was a clear expectation for these babies to resemble Jesus Christ himself.

We know what you’re thinking—did Jesus look like a middle-aged guy as a baby? Don’t worry, you didn’t miss out on that little detail in Sunday school. This just happened to be a quirky artistic ideal that was prevalent during this particular era.

Many artists during this stretch followed the trend of the ‘homunculus,’ which translates to “little man” in Latin. The significance of homunculus comes from a popular religious philosophy that came from the medieval era.

The idea behind homunculus is that Jesus was born as a fully formed man. Thus, artists wanted to convey that the son of God had the knowledge of a wise, old man, even at birth.

Now, that makes a bit more sense, doesn’t it? Sometimes the answers behind life’s biggest questions are, well, pretty darn simple!

So, when did baby Jesus start to look like an adorable infant and less like your uncle? Art historians can trace a definite shift in styles around about a hundred years into the Renaissance. By the 1500s liturgical paintings that featured the baby Jesus began to resemble the common image that most of us have in mind when we think of him.

Now that’s more like it!

The narrator of this video perfectly sums up everyone’s feelings when he says, “We want babies who look like they need their cheeks pinched, not their prostates checked. We want them chubby and cute, and we want babies that fit our ideals.”

Amen to that! I think it’s safe to say that we would all rather take a gander at the Gerber baby, not our high school chemistry teacher with the body of an infant.

Watch Vox’s video below for even more examples of this bizarre phenomenon!

Are you an art lover? If so, who is your favorite artist? Do you have any favorite creepy medieval paintings? Tell us all about your thoughts in the comments section below!