Tag: The Doctor’s Visit
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Art and the myth of the “wandering womb”
Laurinda DixonNew York, United States Seventeenth-century Dutch paintings bearing modern titles such as “The Doctor’s Visit” or “The Lovesick Maiden” are common.1 They were once produced in great numbers and, with some variations, illustrate the same thing. The example by Jan Steen in the Taft Museum in Cincinnati (Fig. 1) is typical. Here a pretty young…
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Art and Medicine
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Art has been said to deepen compassion for suffering.1 Paintings have been interpreted as “metaphors for human feelings . . . they are nonliteral symbols of the inner life.”2 Paintings trigger emotions and insights, “generating associations and tapping new, different, or deeper levels of meaning.”3 It is inherent in all the arts…
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Lovesickness in art and medicine
Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Have you ever suffered the pangs of romantic passion? Count yourself lucky if you have not, for studies show that this feeling may thrive in any world culture.1 The defining characteristic of lovesickness is an obsessive thought: the lovelorn are tormented by the constant image of the unattainable love-object. This…