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. […]
The incidental reach of pattern in Medicine and Art
Eric Will United Kingdom “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a(n artist’s) Heaven for? . . .” — After Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto,” 1855 1,2 (author’s italics) Figure 1. The Birth of the Virgin. 1342 Pietro Lorenzetti. Museo dell’Opera, Duomo, Siena. Wikimedia Commons. The bedside is a […]
The artistic depiction of Christ’s crucifixion: history meets biomechanics
Mark Ransom Johnson City, Tennessee, USA Crucifixion (1430), Hans Von Tubingen, Punkstall Medieval Collection, Vienna, Austria. In Von Tubingen’s work, Crucifixion, Jesus is seen nailed through the hands on a 20+ foot Tau cross, while the thieves to His side are bound by ropes to their patibulums. The artistic depiction of the crucifixion of […]
Falls and art: an evolving story
Glenn Arendts Murdoch, Australia The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, Pieter Bruegel, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples Wellcome Collection Coming to rest inadvertently on the ground:1 the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a fall sounds vaguely patronizing, bordering on disinterested. The human act of staying upright is a complex triumph of the integration of […]
A picture of ill-health: the illness of Elizabeth Siddal
Emily Boyle Dublin, Ireland Fig. 1 Ophelia, Sir John Everett Millais 1851-2, Tate Britain, London It is difficult to think of Ophelia, one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, without bringing to mind the famous depiction of her by John Everett Millais. In Hamlet, the sensitive and fragile Ophelia is driven mad by grief after […]
Passion, paint, and pain: the journey of Robert Seldon Duncanson
Mildred Wilson Detroit, MI, USA Robert Seldon Ducanson Nineteenth Century African American Landscape Artist Lead poisoning (saturnism) has been present throughout history.1 Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini is considered the first to have made the connection between paint and artists’ health. In his book De Morbis Artificum Diatriba published in 1700, he stated, “The many […]