Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Art Essays

  • Ghirlandaio, humanism, and truth: The portrait of an elderly man and young boy

    Vincent P. de LuiseNew Haven, Connecticut, United States “. . . There is no more human a picture in the entire rangeof Quattrocento painting, whether in or out of Italy . . .”– Bernard Berenson Among the defining characteristics of the Renaissance were humanism and naturalism. While many Renaissance paintings and sculptures were depictions of…

  • Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man

    JMS PearceEngland, 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, draftsman, sculptor,…

  • Ophthalmology in Regency era China: a portrait of Thomas Richardson Colledge by George Chinnery

    Stephen MartinThailand 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 Mary Martin (1847-1918) wrote a brief biography of him in 1880.1 It is an absorbing and touching account, and important in relation to an extraordinary medical…

  • Richard Dadd: art and madness

    JMS PearceHull, England Is there anything so extravagant as the imaginations of men’s brains? Where is the head that has no chimeras in it? . . . Our knowledge, therefore is real only so far as there is conformity between our ideas and reality of things. . . – (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane…

  • Mental illness in art

    JMS PearceHull, England 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 mental illness. Some ended their lives in suicide. To what extent is art inspired…

  • Tooth extraction in art: from the dental key to the forceps

    Vicent RodillaAlicia López-CastellanoChristina Ribes-VallésValencia, Spain 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. Hippocrates gives one of the oldest written accounts of tooth extraction, which he considered along with cauterization to be a remedial measure…

  • Wyeth and the symbolism of immobility

    Kierstin UtterDetroit, Michigan, United StatesKyle UtterNew York, New York, United States Andrew Wyeth completed his most iconic work, Christina’s World, in 1948. The painting came at a critical time, when post-World War II everyday Americans were beginning to purchase mass-produced automobiles. The ability to quickly move from city to suburbs was gaining paramount importance. Life…

  • Signs of diseases in art

    Chris ClarkExeter, United Kingdom “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. Both are early works by Caravaggio, and these two diverse biblical women appear to have…

  • The incidental reach of pattern in Medicine and Art

    Eric WillUnited 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) The bedside is a comfortable thinking space for clinicians. On occasion, just there, they bring to mind the clinical patterns that point to a differential…

  • The artistic depiction of Christ’s crucifixion: history meets biomechanics

    Mark RansomJohnson City, Tennessee, United States The artistic depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, particularly from the first known images through the seventeenth century, are inconsistent in their portrayal of His cross and body position. There is little doubt that some of the evolution in the scene is in keeping with the artists’ deliberate…