Eco starts his lecture by cautioning us that we should not take the artifacts of the past to be representative of its tastes. His example is one of Picasso's portraits, but one could as easily point to every work we know: take this Annibale Carracci, for which his cousin posed. It turns out Annibale, who was then at the beginning of his career and poor, was not able to find anyone to model for him. His pudgy cousin finally agreed, with greatest reluctance, and only for the sake of furthering his career (we owe her great gratitude). It turns out the principal cause of her objection was not moral rectitude but bashfulness about her less than ideal figure. This probably does not stop some professor from pointing out this painting as an example of the tastes of his age.
So how comes it, that after cautioning us against taking artifacts of the past as examples of the tastes of the times, Eco proceeds to do just that?
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