Drawing parallels in pandemic art
Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta Victor Grech Pembroke, Malta Photo of the crowd at an undetermined 1918 Georgia Tech home football game. Photo by Thomas Carter, Public domain. Via Wikimedia. “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down […]
Monet’s illnesses: beyond cataracts
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, USA Fig. 1: Claude Monet, Apple Trees in Blossom, 1872, Union League Club of Chicago. Fig. 2: Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge, ca. 1922, Modern Museum of Art New York. No other artist in the world is more beloved than Claude Monet (1840-1926), the father of French Impressionism. From Shanghai […]
Ghirlandaio, humanism, and truth: the portrait of an elderly man and young boy
Vincent P. de Luise New Haven, Connecticut, United States Figure 1. Portrait of an Elderly Man and Child (Ritratto di un Vecchio e Nipote) Domenico Ghirlandaio, tempera on poplar panel. 1490. Louvre. Source. “. . . There is no more human a picture in the entire range of Quattrocento painting, whether in or out […]
Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
JMS Pearce England, UK Second only to his Mona Lisa, the most famous drawing in the world of art is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl. He was named after his birthplace Vinci (at Anchiano) near Florence. He became a painter, […]
Ophthalmology in Regency era China: a portrait of Thomas Richardson Colledge by George Chinnery
Stephen Martin Thailand Fig. 1. Dr. Thomas Richardson Colledge and his assistant Afun in their Ophthalmic Hospital, Macao, 1833. Oil on canvas. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Thomas Richardson Colledge (1797-1879) was an ophthalmic surgeon who practiced in Macao, China, for a quarter of a century in the late Regency era. Colledge’s daughter, Frances […]
Richard Dadd: art and madness
JMS Pearce Hull, England Portrait of British painter Richard Dadd (1817-1886) showing painting Contradiction: Oberon and Titania. Henry Hering. circa 1856. Source Unknown. Public Domain due to age. Is there anything so extravagant as the imaginations of men’s brains? Where is the head that has no chimeras in it? . . . Our knowledge, […]
Mental illness in art
JMS Pearce Hull, England Corridor in the Asylum. Vincent can Gogh. 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is often said that creative art is linked to eccentricity, sometimes bordering on madness. Examples abound of great musicians, writers, and artists who at some time in their lives were deranged and often committed to institutions for […]
Tooth extraction in art: from the dental key to the forceps
Vicent Rodilla Alicia López-Castellano Christina Ribes-Vallés Valencia, Spain Figure 1. A surgeon concealing the Dental key from the patient by Luciano Nezzo (1856-1903). Wellcome Collection. CC Tooth extraction has been practiced for centuries, being carried out first by often itinerant barber-surgeons, and, once the profession became regulated in the late 1800s, by licenced dentists. […]
Wyeth and the symbolism of immobility
Kierstin Utter Detroit, MI, USA Kyle Utter New York, NY, USA Sketches of Teel’s Island. Pen and ink and watercolor. 10 3/8 x 7 3/16”. June 19, 1954. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. W.E. Phelps. Hofer, Philip, and Andrew Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth: Dry Brush and Pencil Drawings, a Loan Exhibition Organized by the Fogg […]
Signs of diseases in art
Chris Clark Exeter, United Kingdom Lucrezia Vertova Agliardi by Giovanni Battista Moroni (1557) The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Every human being tells a story even if he never speaks.”1 Two paintings hang next to each other in the sumptuous Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome: The Rest on the flight to Egypt and Penitent Magdalen. […]