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December 24

Testicles in art

What are some famous or iconic depictions of testicles in visual art (painting, sculpture, etc)? Pre 20th century is more interesting to me but I will accept more modern works as well. 174.74.211.109 (talk) 00:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately not pre-20th century, but the first thing that comes to mind is New York's Charging Bull (1989) sculpture, which has a famously well-rubbed scrotum. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:41, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's "iconic"? There's nothing special about testicles in visual arts. All male nudes originally had testicles and penises, unless they fell off (penises tended to do that more, leaving just the testicles) or were removed. There was a pope who couldn't stand them so there's a big room in a basement in the Vatican full of testicles and penises. Fig leaves were late fashion statements, possibly a brainstorm of the aforementioned pope. Here's one example from antiquity among possibly hundreds, from the Moschophoros (genitals gone but they obviously were there once), through the Kritios Boy, through this famous Poseidon that used apparently to throw a trident [1] (über-famous but I couldn't find it on Wikipedia, maybe someone else can; how do they know it's not Zeus throwing a lightning bolt? is there an inscription?), and so many more! 178.51.16.158 (talk) 05:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article you're looking for is Artemision Bronze. GalacticShoe (talk) 07:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And maybe the Cerne Abbas Giant. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bake-danuki, somewhat well-known in the West through Pom Poko. Card Zero (talk) 11:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Racoons are often depecited in Japanese art as having big balls. As in 1/4 the size of the rest of their body. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These are raccoon dogs, an entirely different species, not even from the same taxonomic family as raccoons. The testicularly spectacularly endowed ones are bake-danuki, referred to in the reply above yours. --Lambiam 02:28, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

European dynasties that inherit their name from a female: is there a genealogical technical term to describe that situation?

The Habsburg were descended (in the male line) from a female (empress Maria Theresa). They were the Habsburg rulers of Austria because of her, not because of their Lorraine male ancestor. So their name goes against general European patrilinear naming customs. Sometimes, starting with Joseph II they are called Habsburg-Lorraine, but that goes against the rule that the name of the father comes first (I've never heard that anyone was called Lorraine-Habsburg) and most people don't even bother with the Lorraine part, if they even know about it.

As far as I can tell this mostly occurs in states where the sovereign happens at some point to be a female. The descendants of that female sovereign (if they rule) sometimes carry her family name (how often? that must depend on how prominent the father is), though not always (cf. queen Victoria's descendants). Another example would be king James, son of Mary queen of Scots and a nobody. But sometimes this happens in families that do not rule over anything (cf. the Chigi-Zondadari in Italy who were descended from a male Zondadari who married a woman from the much more important family of the Chigi and presumably wanted to be associated with them).

What do genealogists, especially those dealing with royal genealogies, call this sort of situation? I'm looking for something that would mean in effect "switch to the mother's name", but the accepted technical equivalent if it exists.

Also do you know of other such situations in European history?

In England where William (Orange) and Mary (Stuart) were joint sovereign did anyone attempt to guess what a line descended from them both would be called (before it became clear such a line would not happen)?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 03:46, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It happens a fair amount in European history, but I'm not sure it means what you think it means. It's generally a dynastic or patrilineal affiliation connected with the woman which is substituted, not the name of the woman herself. The descendents of Empress Matilda are known as Plantagenets after her husband's personal nickname. I'm not sure that the Habsburg-Lorraine subdivision is greatly different from the Capetian dynasty (always strictly patrilineal) being divided into the House of Artois, House of Bourbon, House of Anjou, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 09:52, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the name of the mother I didn't mean her personal name (obviously!) but her line. The example I used of Maria Theresa should have been enough to clarify that. The cases of the Plantagenets (like that of the descendants of Victoria who became known as Saxe-Cobourg, not Hanover) are absolutely regular and do fall precisely outside the scope of my question. The Habsburg-Lorraine are not a new dynasty. The addition of "Lorraine" has no importance, it is purely decorative. It is very different from the switch to collateral branches that happened in France with the Valois, the Bourbon, which happened because of the Salic law, not because of the fact that a woman became the sovereign. Obviously such situations could never occur in places where the Salic law applied. It's happened regularly recently (all the queens of the Netherlands never prevented the dynasty continuing as Oranje or in the case of England as Windsor, with no account whatsoever taken of the father), but I'm not sure how much it happened in the past, where it would have been considered humiliating for the father and his line. In fact I wonder when the concept of that kind of a "prince consort" who is used to breed children but does not get to pass his name to them was first introduced. Note neither Albert nor Geoffrey were humiliated in this way and I suspect the addition of "Lorraine" was just to humor Francis (who also did get to be Holy Roman Emperor) without switching entirely to a "Lorraine" line and forgetting altogether about the "Habsburg" which in fact was the regular custom, and which may seem preposterous to us now given the imbalance of power, but was never considered so in the case of Albert even though he was from an entirely inconsequential family from an entirely inconsequential German statelet. I know William of Orange said he would refuse such a position and demanded that he and Mary be joint sovereign hence "William and Mary". 178.51.16.158 (talk) 10:29, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a sidenote, the waters of this question are somewhat muddied by the fact that Surnames as we know them were not (even confining ourselves to Europe) always a thing; they arose at different times in different places and in different classes. Amongst the ruling classes, people were often 'surnamed' after their territorial possessions (which could have been acquired through marriage or other means) rather than their parental name(s). Also, in some individual family instances (in the UK, at any rate), a man was only allowed to inherit the property and/or title of/via a female heiress whom they married on the condition that they adopted her family name rather than her, his, so that the propertied/titled family name would be continued. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or 'surnamed' after their lack of territorial possessions, like poor John Lackland. --Lambiam 02:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the old style of dynastic reckoning, Elizabeth II would have been transitional from Saxe-Coburg to Glucksberg, and even under the current UK rules, descendants of Prince Philip (and only those descendants) who need surnames use Mountbatten-Windsor. -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In hyphenated dynasty names, the elements are typically not father and mother but stem and branch: Saxe-Weimar was the branch of the Saxon dukes whose apanage included the city of Weimar, Bourbon-Parma the branch of Bourbon (or Bourbon-Anjou) that included dukes of Parma. —Tamfang (talk) 03:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your example of James VI and I is not in fact an example of this: although his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was of the of House of Stuart, so was his father, Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany (better known by his earlier title as Lord Darnley). James was therefore a Stuart on both sides. Proteus (Talk) 13:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]