DIAPER RASH

When Michelangelo had finished his Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel, certain Vatican art experts were disturbed by all those nudes with their privates visible from anywhere in the room. Full frontal nudity was just a little too racy for Counter-Reformation sensibilities.

The authorities got the painter’s student and friend, Daniele da Volterra, to paint little curls of cloth over the offending parts of the figures, much to the relief of the moral arbiters of the Church. Immediately upon completion of his thankless project, Daniele was dubbed by local wags “the Diaper Maker,” a name that has stuck to this day.

Leafing through the May 13 Book Review, one discovers an illustration by Danziger that accompanies your review of Shisako Endo’s book, “Foreign Studies.” And, voila : The spirit of the Council of Trent is vigorously with us at the Good Gray Times!

Here hunches the poor, wet Japanese scholar before Francois Rude’s “La Marseillaise.” In the original relief, standing among a clutch of hairy Gauls, is the personification of the youth of France clad in a bundt-cake mold, a length of rope and his socks.

As he is presented by M. Rude, there’s not much question about the gender of this very physical spirit. The boy in Danziger’s drawing, however, wears an ABD-pack wrapped around his right quadriceps/femur, which hides the source of any possible Mother’s Day embarrassment to Times readers. Thanks to Danziger and The Times Curia for protecting us from the awful truth.

ROBERT P. JENKINS

Professor: Art History

Citrus College

PASADENA