>>7561069>it's for fertilityA silly notion which still, somehow, gets repeated over and over.
The meat is there to call upon the sexual desire of the husband. "Fertility" was, at best, an euphemism used by scholars to try an hide the fact that Venus made them rock hard.
Additionally: Venus (and other ancient depictions of female beauty) rarely depicted young women. Young, "fertile" women do not look thick and were never represented in such a way. Youth is slim and has always been as thin. Peak sex has always been depicted thick.
Only a handful of depictions showcased young women as meaty during the Renaissance and Baroque era.
