Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Art Flashes

  • Feast or famine: Food in the art of Bruegel

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Famine was part of everyday life.”1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569), one of the most accomplished Netherlandish painters, often used peasant life as his subject. The survival of peasant agricultural society depended entirely on the success of their crops. The dream of abundant food, available without working for it, was the theme…

  • The physician’s guide to The Garden of Earthly Delights

    Nora Fisher-CampbellPortland, Oregon, United States I have returned repeatedly to The Garden of Earthly Delights as a strange and fascinating representation of the human experience. The triptych, painted in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century by Hieronymus Bosch, depicts a fever-dream vision of Eden, Earth, and the Last Judgement.1 On the left panel, God…

  • Painter Milene Pavlović Barili (1909–1945)

    Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia Milena Pavlović Barili was one of the most avant-garde and interesting personalities of the world art scene in the first half of the twentieth century. Suffering was inextricably linked to her life. Through suffering, pain, and dreams colored with melancholy, she experienced her own existence and created in solitude. Loneliness, isolation, and…

  • Auguste Renoir and his arthritis

    Renowned for his colorful portraits and landscapes, Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was one of the greatest French Impressionists. He painted some 4,000 compositions, many still admired all over the world. But during his last twenty years, he suffered from a debilitating illness that greatly impacted his work. As a child, Renoir contracted pneumonia, which left him…

  • Interpreting René Magritte’s The Rape

    Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia When exhibited by René Magritte in Brussels in 1930, The Rape was covered with a curtain so as not to cause a scandal. It depicts a woman’s face which, instead of eyes, nose, and lips, has breasts, a navel, and pubic hair. Such was typical of the work of this great in…

  • Farewell, dear pictures that I have loved so well

    For nearly two decades Cardinal Jules Mazarin was the de facto ruler of France and the most powerful person in Europe. Born in Italy in 1602, he worked as a Papal diplomat but offered his services to Cardinal Richelieu and moved to Paris in 1640. When Richelieu died in 1642, he acted as the head…

  • Daumier’s doctors

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.”– Reinhold Niebuhr Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) was a “fundamentally discontented” French social critic, painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He produced over 100 sculptures, 500 paintings, 1000 drawings, 1000 engravings, and 4000 lithographs.1 Balzac said of his work, “There is something of Michelangelo in him.” Daumier hated anything…

  • Ensor’s use of emesis in art

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949) was born to a Belgian mother, Maria Catherina Haegheman, and an English father, James Frederick Ensor. He was born and spent his entire life in Ostend, a summer resort town on the Belgian North Sea coast. The senior Ensor was not successful in business. He had…

  • The trouble with the belly button

    Tonse N. K. RajuGaithersburg, Maryland, United States It is a simple dimple in the mid-abdomen. Yet for medieval artists, it caused mighty headaches while painting portraits of Adam and Eve. Painting the dimple as a natural anatomic feature could be construed as sacrilegious, implying that Adam and Eve were connected by umbilical cords to their…

  • The Girl with a Pearl Earring—A vanitas?

    James LindesayLeicester, United Kingdom It is a truism that you only have one opportunity to see a picture for the first time. However, in our image-saturated age, by the time you get to see a famous painting in the flesh (so to speak) you will have been so primed with reproductions, commentaries, and received opinions…