Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French
“Hey, Ladies — Please Tell Your Friend Tarzan There That I Appreciate His Help With the Winemaking, But He Has To Stop Swinging From the Grapevines,” ca. 1865
Oil on canvas
Follow That Is Priceless on Social Media and GoComics (the Link button):
Click to Follow This Blog or Share This Masterpiece:
Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// At The Wine Press they work hard and long.
To keep cool, some girls wear a sarong.
Though the young man believes
that he’s wearing grape leaves,
poison ivy was used for his thong.
/// With a fig leaf, Eve started the trend:
Covered front, but still bare in the “end.”
Our young vintner’s green thong
has gone horribly wrong,
causing prickling he didn’t intend.
/// They hoist baskets of grapes to the vat,
drop them inside and hear them go splat.
Turning grapes from the vine
into bottles of wine
starts with pressing the purple fruit flat.
/// It’s a hot-tub meets wine-press design.
Many spices and red grapes combine.
In a cycle repeated,
liquid’s stirred, strained and heated.
Then they’ll soak in and drink hot mulled wine.
/// Two sad oxen look on in distress.
Do they turn wheels to power the press?
Long folds hang ‘neath their chins.
Could they be two ox skins,
each to be fashioned into a dress?
/// The three maidens who partly undrape
have been gathering each kind of grape.
They’ll make wine from the best.
Also cheese for their fest
if they milk those cows ere they escape.
/// What’s the subtext seen here? It’s not grapes.
Nor the young people flaunting their shapes.
There’s a reason, I fear,
that horn points to his rear.
Is Pierre hinting at anal rapes?
/// Piers depended on Françoise and Emma
not to bump him when he took from them a
heavy basket of fruit.
Should he trust them? It’s moot.
He is on the horns of a dilemma.