‘Judith beheading Holofernes”
Michelangelo Mersi da Caravaggio
One of the most common surgical disorders captured in art is the enlargement of thyroid gland. Goitre is particularly endemic in Renaissance painting. Let’s break that down a little. Some believe these portrayals were deliberate. The purpose of the goitre being to elicit emotions such as pity, revulsion, mockery, poverty or even an erotic desire. More likely it was incidental. The great artistic developments of the Renaissance and later Baroque eras, were the introduction of perspective and the accurate knowledge of human anatomy. This lead to art that was clear and realistic, with the subjects often human figures. Combine this with the fact that iodine deficiency goitres were common in central elevated Italian regions, such as the heart of the Renaissance, Florence. Fascinatingly, goitres are not seen in coastal Venetian painting of the same period. Subsequent art movements such as Impressionism and its derivatives, lacked the detail of human figures to show any neck pathology. Realism began to emerge again in Modern and Post Modernist art, but the incidence of significant goitre had dropped due to medical interventions.
Pen Paint and Scalpel 