Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Sally Metzler

  • Saint Cajetan (St. Gaetano Thiene)

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States The cupola and two towers of the Theatiner Church in Munich rise high against the backdrop of the Alps in memory of Saint Cajetan. He is the patron saint of Argentina and of the unemployed, beatified in 1629 and canonized in 1671. His feast day is celebrated on August 7.…

  • Shepherd with a goiter

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States This beautiful scene of the Nativity by Moretto da Brescia (c. 1498-1554) in the Santa Giulia Museum of his native town is painted in muted autumnal colors of gold, browns, and greens. On the right the ox and the ass peer out from the stable. A flock of sheep grazing…

  • Saint kills parents, erects hospital, and shares bed with a leper

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States   Masolino da Panicale, Musée Ingres, Montauban. Fig. 1: Attributed to Franciabigio, c.1515, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917.   The Italian Renaissance artist Franciabigio has illustrated a horrendous crime of passion (fig. 1). He depicted the moment when Saint Julian, consumed with false jealously, killed…

  • Saint Sebastian nursed by Saint Irene

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, United States She wears neither latex gloves nor mask, yet Saint Irene performs surgery of the most epic kind, shown here pulling a deadly arrow from the thigh of Saint Sebastian. He was a Roman soldier who incurred the wrath of Emperor Diocletian for protecting Christian martyrs. She, the surgeon-nurse, was a…

  • Doctors as angels and devils

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States The Physician as god, angel, man, and devil Four colored engravings, 1609 Johann Galle after Egbert van Panderen Collection of the Wellcome Institute, London   These four colored engravings from 1609 by Johann Gelle after the design of Egbert van Panderen tell the waxing and waning reputation of the…

  • Distorting anatomy

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, USA In this Mannerist painting of the deposition of Christ commissioned by the Capponi family for their burial chapel in Florence, high drama, distorted anatomy, and cool colors characterize this path-breaking composition. A grave attendant precariously squats on his tippy toes while impossibly bearing the weight of the dead, limp body of…

  • Art and medicine in Renaissance Siena

    Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States   These frescoes by Domenico di Bartolo (active 1420-1444), a stalwart of Sienese Renaissance painters, illuminate daily life in one of Europe’s oldest hospitals, the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala. Situated across from the magnificent Gothic Siena Cathedral, the Ospedale was admired in the fifteenth century for its…

  • A Night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury: syphilis among the British aristocracy in William Hogarth’s marriage à-la-mode

    Sally MetzlerChicago, Illinois, USA William Hogarth’s famous series Marriage à-la-mode parodies English society, particularly their arranged marriages and often dissolute lifestyle. He peppered his satire of upper-class matrimony with a moralizing tone and made clear visual references to syphilis and its treatment in the mid-eighteenth century. Regarded as one of the greatest British artists of his…