The author seems to be projecting modern mores onto da Vinci, imagining him sneering at his subjects, including a bizarre swipe at Mona Lisa's "mannish" face. What I see is a scientifically-minded artist who was interested in the vast range that the human form could take, bucking the contemporary trend to focus on idealized beauty.
Reworked title, perhaps: The Fashion Industry is Still Not Ready for Leonardo DaVinci's Models.
Agreed. It seems as though the author has perhaps not seen that many people, as both the works shown and referenced depict entirely plausible humans. The “duchess” could be a middle aged woman with untreated acromegaly. Hell, maybe she was, as a male acromegalic ancestor could have done well on the battlefield. Today’s dysgenic traits are yesterday’s eugenic. The woman depicted looking left in the sketch is either missing her upper teeth due to decay, or has a cleft pallet.
An awful lot of the variety of the human form that once was is no more in the developed and even developing world, as disease and treatable deformity are generally avoided where possible - and back then, if you were covered in pox scars, syphilitic, toothless and half blind from cataracts - well, you were 35, and lucky to be alive with a thriving family.
I’m struggling to think of anywhere on earth where the kind of conditions Renaissance cities still persist, and I am drawing a blank. We just don’t have that point of reference as a tangible reality any more.
Indeed. The author's takeaway from Leonardo's lovingly detailed renderings of the variety of the human form being "he must have been mocking them" perhaps reflects more negatively on the author's point of view than of DaVinci's.
Reworked title, perhaps: The Fashion Industry is Still Not Ready for Leonardo DaVinci's Models.