Das Frauenbad or The Women's Bathhouse (1496) by the Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is a pen drawing, probably made as a preparatory study for a print that was never executed. The drawing is a highly technical early demonstration of one-point linear perspective, which Dürer would later go on to outline and explain in Four books on human proportion. Featuring six women from different points of view and in different poses, the drawing essentially models a female body in the round. Its visual insight into the subjects' lives is similarly nuanced, featuring different ages, stages of life, and - concurrently - health concerns.

Baths appeared frequently in works by Dürer and his Nuremberg contemporaries. This is not very surprising, since baths were a feature of German civic life. The earliest record of baths in Nuremberg dates back to 1288, when Konrad von Kuerenburg granted the privilege of a bath from the river Pegnitz to the Franciscan monastery. By the sixteenth century, there were approximately thirteen public baths spread across the city. Although it is not clear which bathhouse is represented here by Dürer, the stove in the background and the tap close to the seated woman in the foreground make it clear that this was a technologically sophisticated bath, distinguishing it from those natural spas with which many medical writers in the sixteenth century were preoccupied.

It is evident from this drawing that Dürer paid close attention to the minutiae of bathing. The bundle of twigs, which serve as the painting's axis of perspective, were a tool for exfoliation. In the Galenic nexus that informed the maintenance of health, baths were not simply about washing, but about carefully managing the process of excretion that skin enabled. For similar reasons, combing your hair (as we see the long-haired woman in the centre doing) was an essential act of cleanliness, while protecting your head against overexposure through the use of of hats and wraps, as worn by the three women at the front of the image, was equally common. Finally, the younger woman bathing her elder reminds the viewer that effective cleansing often required interpersonal attention, a facet of which Nuremberg's civic council were well aware. From 1523, the council paid barber-surgeons to attend to the cupping and bleeding practices demanded by this whole-scale attention to skin. The overt sensuality and intimacy of the drawing, as evidenced by the Peeping Tom in the corner, reminds the viewer simultaneously of the interplay between tactility, eroticism, and health in which skin played a crucial role.

HM

Image: Albrecht Dürer, Das Frauenbad, 1496, inventory number Kl 57. © Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen, Kupferstichkabinett

A Pleasing New Cookbook: of many kinds of meals consisting of vegetables, fruit, meat, poultry, game, fish and pastries. Not only for healthy people, but also and especially for infirm people who suffer from various sicknesses and weaknesses, and also for pregnant women, women in childbed and other weak people, artful and useful to be prepared was published in Amberg in 1598 and written by Anna Wecker (aka Weckerin), as this frontispiece tells us. Anna was the widow of Johann Jacob Wecker (1528-1586), a municipal physician in Colmar and also author of several important medical treatises.

Anna was not the first woman to write a cookbook in sixteenth-century Germany. Two other notable examples include the 1545 book by Philippine Welser and the 1553 manuscript by Sabina Welser. In some respects, it is possible to consider books such as these as a precursor to the genre popular in seventeenth-century England that included bestsellers such as The Queen's Closet Opened (1655). Scholars such as Albrecht Classen have argued that these German texts should be studied for their insight into female creativity and literary imagination. Unlike the Welsers, but more similar to later female authors, Anna positioned herself strategically relative to influential male physicians, including her late husband and her son-in-law, the physician Nicholas Taurellus. Not only did she cite the approval of her husband and the knowledge she gained from her many years working with him, but she also claimed that he had learnt from her. For he recognised that her skills in the kitchen helped his patients recover 'almost as reliably as a trip to the apothecary'. She wrote that when he died the physicians in Nuremberg encouraged her to complete the project. She dedicated the text to an important patron, the Countess of the Palatinate Louise Juliana.

The significance of Anna's cookbook, however, lies not just in the clever way in which it parlayed her medical marriage into a place in the complex medical hierarchy; it also made a conscious claim to extend domestic knowledge across the sphere of the preservation of health and the curing of illness. Anna's cookbook was framed as a text for the healthy and sick alike. As one of the Galenic non-naturals (along with air, exercise, sleeping pattern, excretions, and emotions), food played an important part in the maintenance of health. It was fundamentally tied to skin, through its role in managing the porous body. Although many physicians' books referred to diet as a key component in the maintenance of health, they were often rather vague about precisely what you should eat or drink, preferring exhortations to moderate diets or avoiding rich food. In contrast, Anna's book is more specific, providing great insight into what a health-conscious mistress of an urban household might encounter on a daily basis. Its contents broke down into four major sections on nuts, fruit and vegetables, meat, and fish, but recipes for nuts and vegetables frequently advised their use with meat or fish. Anna's recipes incorporate a wide range of ingredients, including many spices such as saffron, cinnamon, ginger, or turmeric, and cooking methods, including roasting, frying, baking, and stewing. The recipes also cover modern food categories, for example there are a variety of milk-based dishes that could be made from almonds, rice, or other products.

Anna included many recipes for 'the sick' (besonders gut fur kranhkeiten), while never specifying a disease. Implicit within such recipes was often a consideration that they might be easy to digest, with the majority of those recipes designed explicitly for sick people relying on stewing or resulting in soft textures. In terms of the preservation of health, Anna set great store by eggs and meat as a source of energy. She shared a disdain for fish as a source of medical benefit with many sixteenth-century authorities, including Erasmus, who hated fish so much that he finagled a lifetime dispensation to eat meat on fast days! Overall, however, she placed particular emphasis on a woman upholding her individual discernment when using cooking to dispense medical help. She wrote that her recipes were not simply to be copied, but to be adapted depending on a patient's nature, age, physical constitution, habits, geographical location, and the context of their disease. The degree to which Anna expected her female audience to be aware of and interpret for themselves the cornerstones of the Galenic, humoral body attests to a high level of medical literacy in early modern Germany and an expansive idea of the domesticity of health and its management.

HM

Image © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (view digitised manuscript)

As with the practice of cupping, in early modern Europe knowledge of the techniques and overarching purpose of acupuncture was long-standing but inexact. Through increased trade and missionary activity, communication with China and Japan was opened up, facilitating contact between Jesuits, Dutch traders, and Chinese and Japanese experts and thus allowing for fresh awareness of the techniques of acupuncture.

Acupuncture needles are found in a number of medical and scientific collections from the Enlightenment period. Within the collection of the Irish physician and antiquarian Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), whose bequest to the nation of over 71,000 objects became the founding collection of the British Museum, are a set of three silver acupuncture needles contained within a lacquered wood box originally owned by the Jesuit Engelbert Kaempfer (see British Museum, As,SLMisc.1077).

Acupuncture equipment and points shown on a figure. Engelbert Kaempfer, 'Acupuntura Japonum'. Credit: Wellcome Collection, CC BY

The first woodcut engraving is taken from Kaempfer's account of the art of acupuncture, contained in his 1712 treatise, Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum Fasciculi V. The illustration depicts a relatively accurate representation of acupuncture needles and their case. Yet at the same time, the depiction of a languid female nude with an open kimono alludes to an exotic, highly gendered and erotic, proto-orientalist context for their use. As Kaempfer's image suggests, whether such items were exotic curiosities or surgical items of study depended largely on how a person determined their use. On the whole, accounts of Far Eastern acupuncture, relayed by missionaries or physicians alike, sought to align acupuncture within traditional Western medical categories. Needles like Sloane's sat on the boundary between exotica (or curiosities) and an increasingly globalised, empirical medical knowledge.

Jacobus Bontius, De Medicina Indorum IV (1642). Credit: Wellcome Collection, CCBY

The first printed treatise to mention the practice of acupuncture was De Medicina Indorum by Jacobus Bontius (1592-1631), which appeared after his death in 1642 (see image). Bontius praised acupuncture, which he called the art of the 'stylus argenteus' for its ability to produce cures that were more effective than miracles, but he did not address its purpose. In Dissertatio de Arthridite; Mantisse Schematica; De Acupunctura; et Orationes Tres (1683), Willem ten Rhijne, a physician with the Dutch East India Company, presented the most systematic and informative European account of the practice. Ten Rhijne was aware that acupuncture was used to treat pain, but he was more attentive to the techniques used to puncture the skin (such as whether the needle was inserted by twisting or tapping) than he was to the medical system underlying it. He was detailed in his account when describing the materials from which the needles were made, comparing them favourably to the unrefined steel of 'barbarous European surgeons', but he translated Qi  - what we might think of today as 'energy flows' - as 'breath' (flatus, spiritus) and so hypothesised that needling was intended to relieve excessive air. Engelbert Kaempfer's important study of Chinese medicine devotes a chapter to acupuncture, but in his more widely read History of Japan Kaempfer suggests that the Japanese surgeons who questioned Jesuit priests about medical practices were themselves more interested in blood-letting than in Qi points.

The interests of the surgeons in Kaempfer's account, however misrepresented, remind us nonetheless that while western authors devoted themselves to commentary that often undermined the theories of eastern physicians, the practice of acupuncture was itself the subject of great debate in China and Japan. The spread of epidemics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant that fever was a concern within Chinese medicine, ushering in new emphases on botany, pharmacology, and physiology. In this changing climate, the traditional place of acupuncture was highly contested. During the eighteenth century, a general shift to differentiate learned medicine saw prominent physicians abandon the art of acupuncture and, in 1822, the practice was banned by an imperial edict and removed from the medical curriculum.

HM

Main image: Acupuncture needles, China, 1700-1901 by Science Museum, London. Credit: Science Museum, London, CC BY

At first glance, Aristotle and Renaissance cheesemakers have very little in common. Yet Renaissance physicians thought otherwise. For according to them, cheesemakers and Aristotle shared a certain knowledge of the surface (or skin) of bodies - human bodies and coagulated milk. In 1477, the Italian physician and diplomat Pantaleone da Confienza published Summa Lacticiniorum, the first treatise on milk and dairy products. This monograph drew clear comparisons between Aristotle's knowledge and that of artisan cheesemakers, who were mostly women - a fact reflected in this image of a fresco at Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento, Italy.

Aristotle used cheese as an analogy, with this dairy substance becoming an explanatory tool in different parts of his work, and for different purposes. The process of coagulation of milk through the action of rennet (which came mostly from the stomachs of sheep and goats) was useful for illustrating the process of generation of a foetus in utero:

• the rennet on milk acted just as active male semen on passive menstrual blood in order to create and shape human life (Generation of Animals, I, xx);
  
• the formation of human skin as a crust made of dried flesh which captured the vapours of foetal concoction inside the body was similar to how rind on cheese is formed (Generation of Animals, II, vi);
  
• the processes of transformation of natural matter through the action of hot and cold elements (Meteorology, book IV);
  
• and finally, the process through which worms and insects could be generated spontaneously from rotten matter (History of Animals, V, xxxi).
  

The cosmological connections between generation, putrefaction, skin, and cheese are many, and indeed predate Aristotle. We only have to recall the myth surrounding the invention of cheese, a tale widespread in cultures of south-west Asia. It tells the story of a nomadic traveller who filled his bags, which were made from the stomachs of animals, with milk at the onset of a long journey, only to find it coagulated when he had reached his destination. Or we can turn to the famous Menocchio, the protagonist of Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms, who built a materialistic pagan cosmology based on the belief in spontaneous generation out of rotten cheese.

But it was Pantaleone writing in the late 15^th century who drew more specific links between cheesemakers and Aristotle, evident in the passages that describe his travels through Western Europe while seeking new observations on cheesemaking. In fact, he recalled all the relevant Aristotelian passages, particularly those that drew an analogy between human skin and cheese rind. He referenced these important natural philosophical principles by referring to the actions of the hands of these illiterate cheesemakers. Those artisans 'stored cheeses in chilly and lightened places, with ample windows for the circulation of the air, on clean shelves, smoothing them down with their hands'. Pantaleone remarked that if one were to ask these artisans why they preserve the cheese in the way they do, 'they would reply that they don’t know the reason', since many of them 'simply follow habit and tradition'. This learned physician was fascinated by the artisanal skills, mainly non-verbal, of the cheesemakers. For, though presumably ignorant of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and Galen’s theory of complexions, they seemed more well informed than others of how to stimulate and encourage natural processes of transformation.

It is significant that Pantaleone often refers to these artisans as magistri and doctores, using such terms to reflect their learned status in their art of creating smooth surfaces from the fermentation and coagulation of matter.

PS

Further Reading:

• Paul Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization (White River Junction, Vt., 2012)
• Joseph S. Fruton, Fermentation: Vital or Chemical Process? (Leiden, 2006)
• Piero Camporesi, The Anatomy of the Senses: Natural Symbols in Medieval and Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1995)
  

Image: Castle of Buonconsiglio, Trent, The cycle of the months, detail of the month of June (early 15^th century). Women are shown milking, transporting milk in wooden containers, making butter, and making cheese by modelling the matter with their own hands.

Despite a plethora of early modern recipes for beautifying the skin, wrinkles as a skin concern are rarely addressed directly in these. Out of more than 200 recipes for beautifying skin within the 1561 work I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese (The Secrets of the Lady Isabella Cortese), there is just one that refers to wrinkles, which features in a section on cosmetic waters. It is a water to make the face beautiful 'without wrinkles' (Ch. 89: Acqua da uiso che’l fa bello senza rughe). There is also a recipe for an oil to preserve youthfulness (Ch. 56: Olio per conseruar la giouentu), which may have been intended to treat wrinkles along with other effects of old age. It is possible that many of Cortese's other recipes do also refer to treating wrinkles, though indirectly, with references to smoothing the skin or making it more lustrous. The ideal skin should be polished, freckle- and spot-free, and pale. A modicum of rosiness was desirable in the cheeks, as it alluded to an ideal sanguine complexion, although redness in the face was detrimental and the subject of many recipes. There are the many vague recipes to ‘make the face beautiful’. These equally might concern wrinkly skin. Similarly, Gli Experimenti of Caterina Sforza (1463-1509) is awash with recipes to make oneself beautiful (A far bella) and remedy issues such as freckles, spots, and redness. However, wrinkles are not mentioned by name. A century and a half later, Thomas Jeamson’s Artificiall Embellishments or Arts Best Directions. How to Preserve Beauty or Procure It (1665) also covered the same concerns, but again does not mention wrinkles explicitly.

The reason for this seeming omission is actually rather simple. Wrinkles brought on by old age were a natural phenomenon, caused by the body's moisture drying out. Thus, it was seen as ‘incurable’. Each person (male or female) was born with a certain quantity of innate moisture, termed ‘radical moisture’. Over time, this dried out slowly with the body's heat. This concept, introduced by Galen and later expanded further by medieval Arabic scholars, was illustrated by a metaphorical oil lamp. The oily wick, symbolising the radical moisture, is consumed by the flame. In alchemy, the quintessence was the radical moisture of metals, and its creation and consumption by an alchemist could delay or even remove the marks of old age. Erasmus comments on this in his 1518 work Oration in Praise of the Art of Medicine (Declamatio in laudem artis medicinae): 'for it is not a fable, but rather attested by a number of witnesses that by means of the fifth essence man can shed decrepitude like a snakeskin and rejuvenate himself'.

Wrinkles of old age could not be cured with the ointments or waters found in beauty recipes. The only wrinkles that could be treated were premature ones, quite unconnected to the ageing process. In his chapter on wrinkles (de rugis) Girolamo Mercuriale (see De decoratione, 1585, ch. 23) commented that 'regarding the wrinkles that occur on account of age, people may be able to sometimes hide them by painting them but they cannot be cured. However when wrinkles are caused by other causes of disease, they can receive treatment'. For Mercuriale, wrinkles that could be treated were those caused by disease and fever, as well as those on the bodies of fat people who had slimmed down (he also includes here the wombs of women who had given birth frequently). Similarly in Giambattista della Porta’s 1558 Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), many of the recipes refer to wrinkles on the belly or breasts after childbearing, or those caused by the sun. He does nevertheless include three recipes for 'a wrinkled face'.

In De decoratione, Mercuriale noted that one of the causes of premature wrinkles on the hands and faces of women was due to them washing with warm rather than cold water. Wrinkles could be spotted by their roughness and unevenness, which was due to the ‘fleshy material’ under the skin drying up and thus ‘melting’ away, leaving the loose folds of skin. Mercuriale advised making sure that the skin was stretched in an even manner to avoid premature wrinkles. This could be achieved by rubbing the skin with either sweet oil or goose or chicken fat mixed with a bit of red lead oxide. He also remarked without further comment that some people used human fat for this purpose.

To disguise wrinkles, Mercuriale proposed three anti-wrinkle medicines (medicamentum derugatorium). He claimed that these were better than alchemical remedies, such as ‘sublimated silver water’, which were harmful to one's health although popular with 'many women'. The first two of Mercuriale's medicines came with a certain pedigree in their authorship. The remedy from Paul of Aegina (AD 7) involved mixing figs with bryony, vetch flour, and honey. It was noted that even rubbing vetch flour alone on the face was helpful, adding that a mixture of only honey and vinegar placed in an alembic also did a marvellous job in hiding facial wrinkles. The second remedy came from Galen. This consisted of mixing together terebinth, litharge, and white olive oil (derived from immature olives). The third medicine was a contemporary recipe, one which 'women are in the habit of obtaining, requesting frequently from doctors'. It involved boiling the roots of sea holly in rainwater and adding chalk made from egg shells.  This decoction would then be applied to the face and hands. The chalk alone could be mixed with vinegar and rubbed on the face to achieve the desired effect. In addition, a mixture of cuttlefish bone dust and runny honey or paste made from the ashes of a burnt ox horn with vinegar could also be smeared on the face - though you would have to lie down for a bit for this last recipe.

All these recipes could only delay the onset of wrinkles or help hide premature ones. Wrinkles from old age were insurmountable!

KWM

Further reading:

• I. Cortese, I secreti della signora Isabella Cortese (Venice, 1562)
  
• D. Erasmus, Oration in Praise of the Art of Medicine (Declamatio in laudem artis medicinae) in F. Fantham and F. Rummel (eds.), Collected Works of Erasmus 29: Literary and Educational Writings 7 (Toronto et al., 1989)
  
• H. Mercurialis, De decoratione (Venice, 1585 and later editions)
  
• T. Jeamson, Artificiall Embellishments or Arts Best Directions. How to Preserve Beauty or Procure It (Oxford, 1665)
  
• C. Sforza,  Experimenti de la Exma Sra Caterina da Furlj,  ed. by P. D. Pasolini (Imola, 1894)
  
• Giambattista della Porta, Magia Naturalis (Naples, 1558)
  
• E. Moreau 'Radical Moisture' in M. Sgarbi (eds.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy (Cham, Switzerland, 2015) 
  

Image: Quinten Massys, An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess'), c. 1513.  The National Gallery, London. Image available under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

A blend of humanism, love for classical sources, observation, and experimentation brought about rather peculiar outcomes in the early modern period. One particular example is a description of fish-hunting offered by both Giovanni Battista Della Porta and Ulisse Aldrovandi. These authors relied on Halieutica, a 2nd-century work on fishing by the Greek poet Oppian, which was published together with a Latin translation in 1517 by the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius.

Della Porta wrote one of the most important scientific bestsellers of the early modern period, Magia naturalis, published first in Latin in 1558 and then later as a new, and much expanded, edition in 1589. The book was translated into Italian, French, Dutch, German, and English, and by the middle of the 17^th century more than 50 editions of the work had been published. According to Della Porta, natural magic was based on the observation of the mechanics of nature and an imitation of this.

Ulisse Aldrovandi is one of the most famous naturalists of the early modern period. He was also a collector and author of a significant number of manuscripts, which were mostly published posthumously. Among his writings, he wrote a large volume on fishes, De piscibus (1613). It is typical of late Renaissance natural history, listing for every fish included mythological and literary sources, its habits, the food it consumed, the places in which it could be found, and the ways in which to catch it.

It seems then that natural magic and natural history were genres in which discussions to catch fish figured prominently. The technique for fishing sea bream (sargus or sargo) involved this fish’s love for goats, suggesting that fishermen might dress in goat skin. And we read in the words of Della Porta the following:

'Sea breams are in love with goats, so much so than when goats go by the sea they, or they see the shadow of a goat appearing on the water, they run and begin to happily jump above the water, taken by a burning desire to get close to them … Fishermen dresse themselves with goat skin, put the goat’s horns on their head, and thus dressed wait for the sea bream; the fishes run around him, and at that point he throws in the water the skin: the sea breams will swim around the skin and it will be easy for the fisherman to catch them.'

Without specifying whether they observed this technique or not, when it came to sea bream the naturalist and the magician were on the same page.

PS

Further Reading:

• Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994)

• William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J., 1994)

Image of a Sea Bream copied from Conrad Gessner and published in Ulisse Aldrovandi, De piscibus (Bologna, 1613)

This well-known illustration from Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s 1522 anatomy handbook is meant to show the structure and location of the muscles within the abdomen and chest, but it undoubtedly achieves much more than this. The male figure is captured in the moment of having just lifted up his skin, willingly offering the viewer the chance to observe his internal layers. At the same time, a religious dimension pervades the image: ideas of sanctity and martyrdom are conveyed by this self-displaying man encircled by a radial ornament. In the 16th century, it was usually the bodies of executed criminals that were dissected publicly for the benefit of medical students and other onlookers. This picture seems to tell us that prior to execution and dissection, the condemned individual had been illuminated by the spiritual light of consolation after having experienced a conversion. The rays of light are almost like a prolongation of his earthly body into a heavenly one. What appears to be a tear upon his cheek is suggestive of this man scarifying himself - a martyr for knowledge of the human body.

The literary genre of the ars moriendi (the art of dying) flourished in late medieval Europe. Handbooks containing instructions for the preparation of a good and Christian death became widespread in urban centres. In the same period, the benefits of confession and absolution were extended also to those criminals condemned to execution. This new concern was reflected by the early 14th century in turn through the foundation of confraternities devoted to ensuring a good death for criminals. In northern Europe these activities were administered by clerics. In Italy, the confraternities were formed of laymen who gave themselves the task of assisting with the religious care of the condemned until the very moment they were sent to the scaffold.

These Italian brotherhoods of comforters, as they were known, were responsible for both the comforting of the condemned until the very point of execution and for the dramatic representations of religious events, in particular the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ. Audiences of the faithful flocked to outdoor stages on religious feast days to see dramatisations on the themes of death and martyrdom. A few days later they might have returned to the same place to witness the rituals that accompanied a prisoner’s final hours.

16th-century comforters’ tablets (Rome, chucrh of San Giovanni Decollato)

Idealised images of dissected men and women, typical of 16th-century anatomy books, functioned on several levels. They alleviated the actual distress and feelings of disgust surrounding the rather violent and graphic act of dismembering a corpse. Yet at the same time, an image of the resurrected flayed man reveals another dimension of Renaissance anatomical imagery. It reveals the connection between the martyred, the criminal, and the dissected body – all bodies torn apart in the pursuit of some kind of truth.

PS

Further Reading:

• Katharine Park, 'The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy', Renaissance Quarterly 47.1 (1994): 1–33
  
• Nicholas Terpstra (ed.), The Art Of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville, 2008)
  
• Roger K. French, Dissection and Vivisection in the European Renaissance (Aldershot, 1999)
  

Main image taken from Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, Isagoge breves (Bologna, 1522)

In line with Galenic principles, the colour of a horse was ascribed to its humoral temperament. The humoral mix affected not only a horse's skin but also its disposition.

A horse dominated by yellow bile (choleric) with a hot and dry complexion would be a chestnut colour and, by nature, light and fiery but lacking in force. If phlegmatic with a cold and damp complexion, the horse would be white, often accompanied by a rather a dull and slow outlook. An abundance of black bile signified a melancholic animal with a cold and dry complexion, it would be sad and faint-hearted, coloured dun or black. And finally, if the predominant humour was blood with a warm and damp complexion, the colour of the horse would be bay (brown with a black mane and tail). This sanguine complexion (manifested as bay in horses and as pale skin with rosy cheeks in humans) was the most prized, and such horses were judged to have a steady and pleasant disposition combined with loyalty and taking easy to the rein.

This was the basic premise but the relationship between humoral mixture and skin colour could be developed even further. For example, in 1602 Pirro Antonio Ferraro suggested that the dappled grey (leardo chiaro) was caused by an even humoral mixture of blood and phlegm and indicated an animal of great vigour and long life, while a dun horse (falbo) was a mix of yellow and black bile, both choleric and melancholic.

It was not only skin colour that reflected temperament. Markings on the horse such as stripes, socks, or stockings could also indicate either positive or negative characteristics in an animal’s deportment. For example, a completely black horse (by nature melancholic) with no markings whatsoever was a complete liability for its owner, as 'it is marvel if he drowne him not, or hurt him by some other way' (Leonard Mascall, 1587). Nevertheless the same author believed that if a black horse had a white spot on his forehead, a white stripe on his nose, or a white sock or stocking on one of the back legs 'he likely to doe wel'. While skin colour due to humoral balances was the accepted norm in judging a horse, not all authors were convinced that markings were so essential:

White markings could be 'created' on a horse’s hide, and various recipes in equine treatises attest to this practice. In his 1591 work, Filippo Scaccho da Tagliacozzo recommended to use a razor to shave off the black or red hairs from the place that you wished to make white before then applying to the area a pounded paste of the roots of a squirting cucumber, nitre, and honey. The most sought-after marking was a white star on a horse’s forehead, as this could increase the animal's value substantially. In his treatise Markhams faithfull farrier (1630), Gervase Markham advocated a popular recipe for this that involved roasting sour apples, which were then peeled and applied to the horse’s forehead until the fruit cooled. If dark hairs remained, another hot apple could be applied. The blistered skin would then be treated with honey until it healed.

In addition to skin colour and markings, an early modern horse could also be judged on other marks of outward appearance, such as the shape of its back, barrel, rump, or legs. Equine treatises were able to offer advice if a horse’s overall shape needed to be improved due to it being too fat or too thin. Mascall suggested feeding a horse barley or wheat that had been soaked in water until it was of a porridge-like consistency 'to plump or puffe up a leane Horse, in short time', while a 'verie fatte' horse was to be given bran mixed with honey and warm water. Thus, in the early modern period a perfectly lovely horse could be achieved by a combination of both nature and human assistance!

Further Reading:

• Martin Arredondo, Prima, segunda, y tercera parte Obras de Albeyteria (1669, multiple editions)
  
• Pirro Antonio Ferraro, Cavallo Frenato (Naples, 1602) 
  
• Gervase Markham, Markhams faithfull farrier (London, 1630)
  
• Leonard Mascall, The first booke of cattell (London, 1587)
  
• Filippo Scaccho da Tagliacozzo, Opera di Mescalzia (Rome, 1591)
  
• Wellcome Library, Ms 7023 (Equine Management, Italy 17th century)
  

Image: Tin-glazed earthenware dish, Deruta (c. 1520-50). Museum number: 2595-1856 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Visual and written descriptions of citrus fruits – along with a widespread desire for them – peaked between the late sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries in early modern Europe. The virtues and appearance of citrus fruits were praised in a range of sources from paintings and natural history treatises, to botanical repertoires and farming and gardening manuals, just to name a few. Citrus fruits - oranges, lemons, and citrons - were part of the tradition of medieval dietetics, a branch of medicine classifying vegetal and animal products according to their humoral complexion. By the middle of the seventeenth century, some books counted as many as 80 varieties of citrus fruit and described their surfaces meticulously, often employing the same Latin term used for skin, cutis.

The first monograph, albeit short, on citrus fruits to break away from a traditional association with medical dietetics was written by Nicolas Monardes and published in Antwerp in 1564. Monardes was a physician from Seville who had travelled in the New World, publishing a famous account of the flora and fauna of the Indies. De malis citriis, aurantiis, ac limoniis libelli is not illustrated but it emphasises the artificial origins of the varieties of citrus that were, in essence, cultivated by humans through experimentations with grafting.  The multiple editions of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s famous commentary to the Greek botanist Dioscorides contained detailed illustrations of citrus fruits, with considerable attention paid to their surfaces. Writing on the so-called 'Adam’s apples' (pomi d’Adamo), Mattioli explained how 'Their peel (scorza) is wrinkled, irregular, and has certain small fissures, as it if had bitten by the teeth; and that is where they got their name from, because the people believe that these were the fruits Adam did bite in the garden of Eden. But those are all fables.' (I discorsi di Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Venice, 1568, p. 270) (see main image).

Anatomy-style sections of dissected fruits from Johannes Camerarius, Kreuttenbuch (Frankfurt, 1611)

Even more detailed images appear in Johannes Camerarius’ Kreuttenbuch, published in 1611, in which citrus fruits were represented in a new visual dissection or anatomical style. Here the surface was placed along with sections of the interior, thus connecting the inner and the outer bodies of the fruits (see figure). In the same period, the famous northern Italian agronomist Agostino Gallo devoted an entire section of his treatise on farming to citrus gardens, praising their commercial value. From his description, it clearly emerges that citrus fruits were also shown off on the table for their aesthetic qualities.

'Striated lemon from Amalfi' from Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Hesperides sive de malorum Aureorum cultura et usu (Rome, 1646)

But the most lavishly illustrated treatise on citrus fruits was written by the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Ferrari, the Hesperides sive de malorum Aureorum cultura et usu published in Rome in 1646. Ferrari was a professor of Hebrew at the Roman College and, after the election of pope Urban VIII in 1623, he became a gardener (though more like a 'horticultural adviser') for the Barberini family. He took full advantage of the documents gathered by Cassiano dal Pozzo, an eclectic collector and natural historian, and eminent member of the Academy of the Linceans. Dal Pozzo had brought together information on citrus trees and fruits from gardeners working all over Europe, but in particular from the Italian regions of Campania and Liguria. Dal Pozzo passed on all these documents to Ferrari to assist him in drafting his treatise. Ferrari's book combines naturalistic descriptions, gardening techniques, and mythological accounts of the origins of citrus fruits alongside illustrations by the likes of Domenichino, Reni, Poussin, Romanelli, and Pietro da Cortona, but to name a few. The majority of the 80 illustrations, of which 50 or so show hybrids and the teratological transformations of citrus fruits, are by the Dutch engraver Cornelis Bloemaert. Some of them were produced with the aid of a microscope. As David Freedberg notes, 'never had the surfaces of their [citrus fruits] peel been shown with such obsessive attention to every kind of texture, rugosity, lump, and protuberance' (see figure).

This is an example of one of the many varieties of lemons as described by Ferrari. Of note is the language employed, as it seems as if Ferrari was describing human skin.

In any case, the Jesuit was not born in a void. Citrus fruits were used and described for commercial, aesthetic, medical, naturalistic, and technical (the juice was used in the processes of chemical tincture) reasons. The emphasis on the peel, skin, and surface is connected to a contemporary emphasis of genres such as historiae, observationes, and descriptiones in the natural sciences. Such approaches brought attention to the external appearance of these natural objects and, in turn, were influenced by commercial and technical descriptions of the integrity and peculiarities of such surfaces.

Still life with lemon peel; Willelm Kalf; 1664

Quite besides the countless representations of citrus fruits in paintings (see figure), we get a real sense of 'citrusmania' from the account of Joseph Furttenbach when travelling to the Ligurian city of San Remo in the early seventeenth century.

PS

Further Reading:

• David Freedberg, 'Ferrari and the pregnant lemons of Pietrasanta' in Il giardino delle Esperidi: gli agrumi nella storia, nella letteratura e nell’arte, ed. by Alessandro Tagliolini (Florence, 1996)
  
• David Freedberg and Enrico Baldini, eds., The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo, Natural History: Citrus Fruit (London, 1997) 
  
• Irma Beniamino, Giardini di agrumi nel paesaggio di Sanremo: coltura e varietà nei secoli XII-XIX (Rimini, 2017)
  
• Ferrari’s book: http://www.botanicus.org/item/31753000543642

Main image: 'Pomi d'Adamo' from I discorsi di Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Venice, 1568)

In 1574, large parts of modern-day Tunisia, including the cities of Tunis and Bizerte, were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. This followed a long war with the Spanish army and its allies. Miguel de Cervantes, among others, participated in the war. In the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (BUB) is an interesting document that was written by one of the minor military leaders from the Spanish army. The author is the Italian 'Don Giuseppe Terla, knight of Saint Mauritius and Jerusalemite knight, for Marcello Melchiorre' and he was one of the leaders at the Battle of Bizerte. Among the military details, his account includes descriptions of everyday life of the Tunisian people. We read about such things as their food, the ways in which they rode horses, and their leather garments. Despite a contempt for their religious beliefs, these descriptions reflect a curious interest from the Westerners of 'Arabic' material culture and their passion for the costumes of different peoples. Here follow some excerpts.

PS

Image: 'Tunis'. Map by Willem Jansz Blaeu (1571-1638), Collection d’Anville, Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century noble families in Italy loved to spend time at their country villas. A new vogue for husbandry, the simple life and the fresh air of the countryside took root among the patrician classes. Noblemen and women were eager to spend time away from their political duties and from the dangerous miasmas prevalent in the urban environment, where plague remained a significant threat. While in the country, they enjoyed the pleasures of farming, gardening, hunting, and appreciation of animals - especially horses. This change from town to country life encouraged the development of expertise in livestock and animal husbandry.

The powerful Gozzadini family, famously portrayed by painter Lavinia Fontana in the 1580s, at their farm in Sala (a few miles from Bologna) employed two renowned experts in their field. Francesco Valentino Barbieri, the ‘estate manager’ [fattore], who in 1632 had overall responsibility for the family’s thirty-three horses, and Pellegrino Ortolani, called the ‘stableman’ [cavallaro], who compiled a list of the horses. The list is catalogued amongst several other manuscripts that detail a variety of equine medications, including unguents to treat skin and hair, and instructions for bloodletting [https://renaissanceskin.ac.uk/themes/living/#image_thumb111]. Each horse is recorded by name, as well as the animal’s age, colour, and any significant markings. The fact that individual, even affectionate names, as well as comments on the horses’ behaviour were included evidences the powerful bond that existed between humans and their horses in this period.

“List of horses made today 4 October 1632 with my stableman Pellegrino Ortolani.

1. One male horse, whole [intiero, i.e. not castrated], with light grey hair [pelo stornello], 4-year-old, named Frontino the stallion.

2. One male horse, castrated, white and black [pelo leardo], 5-year-old, named Rabicano.

3. One male horse, castrated, ashes grey colour [pelo morello brusato], 6-year-old, named Dorino.

4. One male horse, castrated, dark with a spot on the forefront, 5-year-old, named Palpastrelo.

5. One male horse, castrated, red hair [pelo baio], 5-year-old, named Speza lanza.

6. One male colt, blonde with lighter hair in the front, 2-year-old, named Mascherino.

7. One male colt, reddish hair, 2-year-old, named Vulpino.

8. One male colt, with reddish hair, spotted in the front, with white hair above the hoofs, 2-year-old, named Balzanello.

9. One male colt, grey, 2-year-old, named Grillo.

10. One female horse, blonde, 4-year-old, named Saura, with

11. A little male horse near her.

12. One female horse, dark with a spot on the forefront, 4-year-old, named La curta.

13. One female horse, dark, 4-yaear-old, named Cornachia.

14. One female horse, dark with a spot on the forefront, 4-year-old, named Bissa.

15. One female horse, red, 4-year-old, named Rizza.

16. One female horse, red, 4-year-old, named Plizzona.

17. One female horse, red, 5-year-old, named Zannetta.

18. One female horse, white and black with little black spots, 7-year-old, named Fantina.

19. One female horse, red, shakily walking, 9-year-old, named Favorita.

20. One female horse, dark, 7-year-old, named Port’il Vanto.

21. One female horse, white and black with little black spots, 8-year-old, named Barberina.

22. One female horse, dark, 8-year-old, named Moretta.

23. One female horse, red hair with a spot on the forefront, 7-year-old, named Ionda.

24. One female horse, red hair with a spot on the forefront, 8-year-old, named Trespa.

25. One young female horse, red hair, 1-year-old, named Brasa.

26. One young female horse, dark hair, 1-year-old, named Rondanina.

27. One young female horse, red hair, 1-year-old, named Santina.

28. One young male horse, red hair, 1-year-old, named Cervo.

29. One young male horse, with light grey hair, 1-year-old, named Stornello.

30. One young male horse, white and black, 1-year-old, named Ruggiero.

31. One young male horse, dark, 1-year-old, named Magnano.

32. One young male horse, with light red hair, 1-year-old, named Garofalo.

33. One young male horse, with dark hair and a grey spot on the forefront, 1-year-old, named Barbarino.

Today 17 October 1632. I, Francesco Valentino Barbieri, estate manager at the Ca’ Biancha in Sala, have taken under my care the horses listed above from Gio. Battista in the presence of the following witnesses […].” [Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna, Archivio Gozzadini, Documenti e corrispondenza, vol. 25]  

PS

Between the end of June and the beginning of July 2019 Europe has been hit by a worrying heatwave, which beyond any reasonable doubt is due to the global warming of the planet. In Italy, June 27 2019 has been one of the hottest day in history since temperatures are regularly recorded. The sight of children bathing in fountains and elders seeking refreshment in rivers is not just a contemporary one.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century Europe saw a drop of temperatures which led some historians to speak about a “little ice age,” bringing with it systematic social problems such as famines and increasing the devastating effects of the European wars of the period – especially in northern Europe. On a less easily perceivable scale, and in southern regions, occasional heatwaves must have been especially problematic in the face of a general cooling of the environment.

The Gozzadini archives at the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio of Bologna host the correspondence of Brandoligi Gozzadini with his father in the period between 1661-1675, covering the adolescence of Brandoligi [all references from: Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna (BCAB), Gozzadini, Corrispondenza, XII, vol. 38]. Brandoligi, the son of the powerful senatorial family of the Gozzadini, was sent by his father Marcantonio to Florence as young page at the Medici court; the correspondence is a sort of an account of a court education. Pages learned how to serve at the table, to take care of noblemen, but also to ride, dance, fence, and were educated in the arts and sciences. This rich correspondence contains notes on fashion, food, clothing, horses, contact with Ottoman slaves, the use of microscopes, studying Galileian philosophy, the threat of smallpox, etc. One interesting topic is fighting heatwaves by taking advantage of the water of the Arno river. On July 20, 1669, the young page wrote to his father:

“The delay of my reply is due to the fact that we go bathing every day, and we study the whole morning. But given this burning sun (Sol Leone) the teachers have been sent on vacation, and I will have more time to write. This heatwave is terrible and no one here, not even the elders, remember anything even close to this heat; if it wasn’t for the cooling effects of bathing in the Arno, I would not know how to fight this weather.”

Sometimes bathing was not possible though, and Brandoligi shows a pretty accurate knowledge of the natural environment he was living in. Three years before, he wrote:

“This heat has really been treating us badly: it is not raining here in Florence, but it rains up in the mountains where the Arno springs, and for this reason its waters are murky and muddy, and we cannot go to swim, and we are so sad about it.”

Overheating the body was a serious problem for early moderns, since it could bring about different sorts of internal illnesses. Managing the temperature of the skin, the external protective layer of the body, could prove crucial. Besides bathing during heatwaves, too much dancing at parties could prove to be dangerous, and in such occasions opening the skin and the veins could be the right thing to do. In the spring of 1670 Brandoligi wrote:

“Last Tuesday I haven’t written to Your Most Illustrious Lordship because I took some medicament since I am overheated; to tell the truth, this is because I have danced and drunk too much, and I now take refreshing syrups and I have blood drawn from my vein.” 

Image: Giuseppe Zocchi, Lungarno e Ponte alle Grazie in Florence (1744).

Further readings:

• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000 (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1988).
•  Alexander More, “Climate Change, Health, and theAnthropocene: Why We Must Study the Past,” Remedia, December 8, 2017 

  https://remedianetwork.net/2017/12/08/climate-change-health-and-the-anthropocene-why-we-must-study-the-past/

Physicians were among the many providers of cosmetic recipes and preparations in the early modern marketplace, competing with surgeons, apothecaries, empirics, and female healers, apart from the sphere of household medicine, where cosmetics play a prominent role in domestic receipt books compiled by women.

Pieter van Foreest (1521 – 1597) was Dutch physician, who studied initially at Leuven, then at Bologna, with periods spent in Padua and Ferrara. He gained experience by working in Rome and Paris and he returned to his hometown of Alkmaar in 1543 where he practiced as a physician, later moving to Delft where he was employed as a town physician for nearly forty years. His most important work was the Observationes, in which he detailed the ailments and treatment of individual patients. Numbering c. 1350 cases in all, these were later supplemented by the Scholia (commentary) for each case, which extensively cited authorities and supplemental recipes. It was published in various editions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and cemented Foreest’s reputation as one of the most prominent physicians in the Netherlands. The short volume in which Foreest collects his cases regarding improving the complexion is named De Fucis (On cosmetics) and consists of eleven observations, with accompanying scholia for each one. Subjects covered in Foreest’s De fucis ranged from pustules to whitening skin or dealing with obesity.  

Each one concerns a different complaint, and starts with describing a patient or patients, with identifying information such as their location and the date, such an ‘an aristocratic canoness from Leusden in 1590’ or  ‘Eva van Teijlingen, my very dearest wife’.  Interestingly, apart from the pockmarks of children, all of the cases cited by Foreest involve female patients, which may suggest that they made up the bulk of his patients seeking to remedy flaws in their complexion.  This would be followed by assorted recipes of the prescriptions utilised to remedy the issue. References to medical authorities in print are most copious in the Scholia, but also appear in Observationes. Van Foreest would often include references to the medical practice on the subject by other physicians he knew, such as Gisbertius Horstius or Cornelius of Rotterdam and even his apothecary in Alkmaar. Regarding other physicians’ works on beauty, he cites Guillaume Rondelet’s De fucis twice, for pockmarks and when giving the recipe for the ‘beauty cream of the Duchesse d’Estampes. However this work by Rondelet (1507-1566), a professor of medicine at Montpellier, was merely a collection of recipes on beautifying the skin, hands, teeth and hair. Van Foreest is notable for individualising his patients and their particular complaints, making his work a helpful contribution in trying to establish the early modern patient experience in regard to cosmetic medicine.

A summary of van Foreest’s patients with their skin and hair afflictions in De fucis:

Observation I: On skin blemishes.

Patient: ‘an otherwise attractive girl had facial blemishes which disfigured her, so she came to consult me on the causes’ (an egg white wash distilled in an alembic is prescribed for the spots)

Observation II: on blemishes, paleness and redness of the face.

Patients: girls from Delft with pale faces, due to eating wheat which upset their stomachs. Prescription: purging. Other recipes given for either excessive paleness or redness on the face, including using rosewater, lizard blood or bull bile, recipes for removing blemishes and wrinkles from Gisbertus Horstius and Cornelius of Rotterdam, used at the hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Rome

Observation III: on pustules and impetigo of the face

Patient: A girl who had red pustules on her face. Liniment of burnt mouse poweder and oil prescribed. Recipes given for pustules and for fresckles, including one test by van Foreest’s apothecary in Alkmaar.

Observation IV: On getting rid of and whitening scars.

Patient:  ‘Eva van Teijlingen, my very dearest wife, due to an accident had on her forehead a scar caused by wound that had not healed well’. Recipes for recent scars, both fine and thick. Van Foreest noted that old thick scars were difficult to remedy by recommended a plaster and live cautery iron if not helpful. Also gives a water to remove all blemishes, colour and ugliness which he found among the papers of the physician who practiced before him in Alkmaar.

Observation V: on getting rid of the traces of measles and smallpox.

Patients: particularly children. Recipes by Guillaume Rondelet. De Foreest also references ointments and waters that he had tested in the Domicella Sparvvouvvia and Domina de Haesten hospitals, and which appear in another section of his Medical Observations.

Observation VI: On growing hair back.

Patient: ‘an aristocratic canoness in Leusden, 16 February 1590, for a visible regrowth of hair on the head’. Prescribed a purge, head is shaved and a lotion is applied, followed by an ointment, recipes for both are supplied.

Observation VII: on whitening teeth and getting rid of their faults

Observation VIII: on scorches and burns from fire and hot water

Gives two recipes, and also mentions that he himself likes using quince paste mixed with rose water.

Observation IX: On whitening the skin of the hands and the skin

Gives a recipe used Gilbertus Hostius in Rome ‘my teacher’ at the Hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione, plus other recipes van Foreest has used such as pouring bran-infused buttermilk or milk and ‘I recommend that young ladies use the innermost part of bread and ground almonds with bran water’

Observation X: on obesity, and how to avoid too much thinness

Observation XI: on thinness, and how to avoid getting fatter.

KWM

Main Image: Man and Woman at a Spinning Wheel, Pieter Pietersz. (I), c. 1560 - c. 1570. Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands.

Further reading:

• Pieter van Foreest, Observationum et curationum medicinalium, sive medicinæ theoricæ et practicæ libri XXX. XXXI. et XXXII. De venenis, fucis et lue venerea (Frankfurt: Collegio Musarum Paltheniano, 1631): 52-64
• Catrien Santing, ‘Pieter van Foreest and the Acquisition and Travelling of Medical Knowledge in the Sixteenth Century’ in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, Jon Arrizabalaga, eds. Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and Education in Europe, 1500–1789 (Abindon: Routledge, 2010): 149-170

In 1661, the Dutch pastor Hermann Busschof, stationed in colonial Batavia, was seized by a particularly severe bout of gout. The chronic disease, deemed incurable by European physicians, attacked its victims with excruciating joint pain, which was often accompanied by tumorous swellings, most commonly in the foot. After weeks of suffering and sleeplessness, during which he sought relief to no avail, Busschof ''was persuaded to suffer an Indian Doctress to come to me, which was of Quinam [Cochinchina], whom my Wife commonly employed for the curing of our slaves, and who also had been very successful in recovering my only daughter from a certain difficulty of breathing. This Indian woman being demanded, whether she knew how to cure that painful disease which I was molested with; Answered, she did. But to tell you the truth, it was done by a way of Burning: Which means being by me rejected out of an apprehension I had of the pain that must needs accompany such a remedy.''

However, the pastor soon began to regret his cowardly decision and changed his mind once the pains returned. Having called the ‘Indian doctress’ back, Busschof described how ''she burned with her Moxa on my feet and knees about twenty little Escars, which looked like little gray specks, without raising any blisters, or causing any after-pain; whereupon also all the pain of the Gout vanish’d.''

The practice described by Busschof was that of moxibustion, a traditional Chinese medical therapy, which was also employed in the Japanese and other regional medical systems. As Busschof explained, moxibustion entailed the burning on the patient’s skin of moxa, or pellets made of “a very soft and woolly substance, crafted by a very skilful preparation out of a certain dried Herb”. The Japanese name of this herb, mogusa (a species of mugwort, Artemisia spp.), was Romanised by Busschof to coin the term ‘moxa’. The purpose of this method was to draw out and dispel noxious vapours and winds, considered as the main cause of disease in Chinese and Japanese traditions. 

An image of moxibustion in Michael Bernhard Valentini’s Museum museorum (1714).

Busschof’s astonishing recovery persuaded him to compile a treatise, which was originally published in Amsterdam in 1675, and within which, the ‘miraculous remedy’ was introduced to European readers. The pastor conceived of his work as a Socratic dialogue between the sceptical Theophilus, who doubted every claim and observation presented, and the patient teacher Theodidactus, whose reasoned replies eventually dispelled his interlocuter’s doubts. The treatise introduced moxibustion as an infallible remedy for gout, among other ailments, and criticised European physicians for their arrogance and misunderstanding of the true cause of the disease, which Busschof believed was the main reason why “the Gout had been left for incurable.” He offered an alternative explanation for the origin of gout, which combined elements of Chinese and humoural medical systems: he reasoned that the disease was caused by noxious vapours (as the Chinese believed), which he described in humoural terms as dry and cold. In turning to winds as the source of disease, Busschof invoked the authority of the ancient medical treatise De Flatibus (‘On Winds’), attributed to Hippocrates, as well as that of “the Chinese Doctors [who] are all of that mind” too. 

Given their cold and airy nature, Busschof argued that the noxious winds could be drawn out and dispelled with the use of heat and fire. Cauterisation, either through red-hot iron or various caustic remedies, had a long tradition in European medicine. However, as Busschof’s initial reluctance to undergo the procedure affirms, burning was often feared as an unnecessarily fierce and painful procedure, which left unwelcome marks on the skin. Moxibustion, however, was gentler, safer and “the pain is very tolerable, because the matter […] burns not unto the very skin,” as Busschof asserted. In consequence, moxa also only “causes a little grey speck […] which sometimes rises to a wound or blister” that soon disappears, rather than producing nasty ulcers or deep wounds, which could disfigure the patient and occasion additional medical problems. For these reasons, moxa was found to be an “excellent Caustick, preferable to all the rest”. Busschof’s discussion, built around noxious vapours, the Hippocratic Corpus and cauterisation, found echoes in two later treatises of moxibustion written by Willem ten Rhijne (1684) and Engelbert Kaempfer (1712), two Dutch East India Company physicians who spent some time stationed in Dejima in the Nagasaki bay. In this way, the Dutchmen sought to reconcile a traditional Chinese therapy with European medical frameworks and pave the way for its introduction in Europe.

Traditional Japanese moxibustion points, as reproduced in Engelbert Kaempfer’s treatise (1712).

As an employee of a trading company, Busschof saw moxa as an opportunity for profit. He invited the Dutch East India Company to start exporting moxa from Asia, “since it will prove a gainful commodity in Europe, and be no burthen to ships.” His treatise concluded with an advertisement that Johan Busschof, his brother living in Utrecht, can provide expert advice on moxa, alongside its samples. Busschof’s treatise garnered immediate attention, and translations into English (1676) and German (1677) quickly followed. Whilst gout remained at the centre of discussions, moxibustion was experimented with in other ailments too, including toothaches and neurological issues.

Moxa’s reputation received a further boost through the case of a ‘celebrity patient’: the English ambassador to the Low Countries, Sir William Temple, who published an account of his successful recovery from the gout in 1680. In it, Temple lamented that what first seemed as “some sprain at tennis” developed into the feared disease. Having heard of his troubles, his Dutch colleague Constantijn Huygens (the father of the natural philosopher Christiaan) brought Temple a copy of Busschof’s treatise. After a long, reasoned consideration, Temple decided to give moxa a try. The outcome exceeded his expectations: he “could not believe such an effect, which seldom reaches to the degree that is promised by the prescribers of any remedies.” The news of other successful cases, alongside Huygens’ instigation, convinced Temple to share his experience in print. To avoid any accusations of neglect, Temple provided accounts of other certified gout treatments, including advice from Prince Maurice of Nassau himself, who “used but one remedy, which was, whenever he felt it, to boil a good quantity of horsedung [and] set his leg in a pail-full of it.”

Despite dismissing the practice, Lorenz Heister provided an image of moxibustion (Fig. 12) with a dry (A) and ignited (B) pellet.

Despite the successful outcome, Temple’s report introduced first doubts into the narrative. Temple’s experience of the burning was far from gentle and painless, and his gout later returned, not once but twice. Although moxibustion brought relief in both cases, the method could hardly be considered a flawless cure. Moreover, cases in which moxa failed to produce the desired result entirely began to grow by the day. The fears of disfiguration of skin, associated with cauterisation, remained an issue, too. Kaempfer, in his 1712 treatise, did little to dispel these anxieties. He described that in Japan, “both sexes [are] so full of scars and marks of former exulcerations, one would imagine that they had undergone a most severe whipping.” Whilst “according to their notions, their beauty is not in the least lessen’d thereby,” this would not have been the case in Europe.

In light of the growing number of disappointed patients in Europe, Kaempfer accused Busschof of going “too far, when he recommended the Moxa to his Countrymen as an infallible remedy for the gout.” To provide an explanation for why moxa happened to fail so often, Kaempfer turned to differences in climate. He argued that “the like success cannot be reasonably expected from its application in our colder European climates,” since “in hot Countries the perspiration is stronger, the fluids thinner, the pores wider.” Moxa’s reputation was starting to crash almost as fast as it had initially soared. In 1719, the German surgeon Lorenz Heister wrote that whilst moxa “may have been cried up by many of the Europeans, it is at present quite in Disuse, and that not without Reason; for, besides the acute Pain which it causes, it is frequently found to have little or no Effect.” Indeed, in the words of Heister’s colleague Johann Junker, by 1722 Busschof’s supposedly infallible remedy “had come out of fashion.”

SK

Title image: The frontispiece to the English translation of Hermann Busschof’s treatise (1676).

Primary sources cited

• Hermann Busschof, Het Podagra (Amsterdam, 1675). English translation: Two Treatises of the Gout (London, 1676).
• William Temple, ‘An Essay Upon the Cure of the Gout by Moxa’, in Miscellanea (London, 1680).
• Willem ten Rhijne, ‘De Chineese En Japanse Wijse Om Door Het Branden Van Moxa’, in Steven Blankaart, Verhandelinge Van Het Podagra (Amsterdam, 1684).
• Engelbert Kaempfer, Amoenitatum exoticarum, vol. 3 (Lemgo, 1712). English translation: The History of Japan, vol. 2 (London, 1727).
• Michael Bernhard Valentini, Museum museorum (Frankfurt, 1714).
• Lorenz Heister, Chirurgie (Nuremberg, 1719). English translation: A General System of Surgery (London, 1743).
• Johann Junker, Chirurgie (Halle, 1722).

Further reading

• Wolfgang Michel, ‘Far Eastern Medicine in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Germany’, Studies in Languages and Cultures 20 (2004), 67–82.

On September 10th, 1579, John Dee made a brief note in his private diaries.  He had had a “dream of being naked, and my skyn all overwrowght with work like some kinde of tuft mockado, with crosses blew and red; and on my left arme, abowt the arme, in a wreath, this word I red— sine me nihil potestis facere: and another the same night of Mr. Secretary Walsingham, Mr. Candish, and myself.” 

Dee occasionally described dreams he found particularly significant or worthy of interpretation, recording them alongside major events like births and deaths within his household as well as his meetings with Queen Elizabeth, various aristocratic patrons, and court officials.  In this dream, he had seen himself marked all over with blue and red crosses—his skin, as he put it, looking like “tuft mockado,” a type of patterned wool fabric which imitated velvet.  Dee had also dreamed that his left arm was inscribed with a Latin version of a phrase spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John: “without me ye can do nothing”. 

Locating the subconscious origins of a dream can be difficult, even when it’s your own.  Finding the inspirations behind Dee’s dream over 440 years ago can only be speculative, at best—but there are a few likely influences.  As a practitioner of the occult arts, Dee, a renowned astrologer and alchemist, would have been quite familiar with ideas of inking or inscribing skin as an element of magical practice.  (His contemporary, the would-be magus Simon Forman, is known to have marked himself on his arm and chest with the ‘characters’ of Venus, Jupiter, and Cancer during one magical ceremony.)  Dee was also a scholar of history, and would have read numerous sources claiming that ancient Britons, particularly the Picts, had been extensively tattooed; it was a widespread perception in the late sixteenth century that the ancestors of those inhabiting the British Isles had had “durable skars” across their bodies and “painted pownced limmes”.  A third possible influence, however, might be hinted at in Dee’s other dream from that same night, when he had dreamed of a visit or conversation between himself, Secretary of State Francis Walsingham, and “Mr. Candish” (likely Richard Cavendish, Member of Parliament and uncle to the privateer and explorer Sir Thomas Cavendish): men closely involved in promoting England’s imperial interests, particularly overseas colonization in the Americas.  Alchemy, history, and the tattooed appearances of indigenous Americans were likely all inspirations to Dee’s sleeping mind.

"Hand covered in alchemical symbols", an image from English manual of practical chiromancy or palmistry dated 1648, courtesy of Wellcome Collection. 

Widely considered one of the most learned men of England, Dee was often consulted by Queen Elizabeth and members of her court for his alchemical knowledge and for his expertise in the navigational arts.  His advocacy, too, on behalf of Elizabeth’s imperial claims, had brought him a great deal of royal favor.  Two years prior to his dream, in November 1577, Dee had “declared to the Quene” and Secretary Walsingham “her title to Greenland, Estetiland and Friseland” (Estetiland referred to what is now northeast Canada, and Friseland to southern Greenland).  His scholarship was solicited repeatedly by the monarch, her advisors, and advocates of Atlantic colonization, and Dee wrote multiple treatises on the subject.  Some of his works had explained, with maps, the most recent geographical knowledge of the North Atlantic region, while others were historical surveys intended to prove English title to overseas territories, drawing on evidence which ranged from the reputed westward travels of King Arthur and St. Brendan to the recent voyages of the Cabots and Martin Frobisher.

Frobisher’s Arctic expedition of 1577 had kidnapped three Inuit people who were taken to England as captives with the intention of utilizing them as interpreters and displaying them to patrons who might fund future voyages.  One of the three, a woman known as ‘Arnaq’—a term likely meaning ‘woman’ rather than her true name—died shortly after Frobisher’s return to Bristol in November 1577, but not before at least two artists had painted portraits of her with her infant child.  At least one of the paintings, by Cornelis Ketel, was presented to the Queen and displayed at Hampton Court (the image is now lost).  The woman’s facial tattoos, which included blue dots across her cheeks and lines on her chin, struck many as the crucial element of her self-presentation, prompting significant written commentary by observers.  William Camden would later describe the Inuit captives as having “black hair, broad faces, flat noses...the women painted about the eyes and balls of the cheek with a blue colour like that of the ancient Britons.”

Did Dee see her portrait?  Perhaps.  He certainly heard reports of her and the other New World captives as he prepared his manuscripts on “Imperium Brytanicum” and met with other advocates of Northwest Passage exploration, including Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Richard Hakluyt.  Without more details of how Dee interpreted his dream it’s impossible to know whether he directly connected his vision of his “skyn all overwrowght with work” with the tattooed captives who had been brought from the “Estetiland” he thought and wrote about so often.  However, as an occultist who understood the powerful magical potential in marking the body to influence events, as well as a bold advocate of Britain’s imperial claims, Dee must have reflected carefully on the messages inscribed within his dreaming skin. 

Guest blog courtesy of Mairin Odle

Dr. Mairin Odle is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama, where she teaches courses in Native American studies and the history of the body.  Her current book manuscript, Skin Deep: Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America (under contract with Penn Press), explores how cross-cultural body modifications in early America remade both physical appearances and ideas about identity.  Focusing on indigenous practices of tattooing and scalping, the book traces how these practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers. 

Title Image: Arnaq and her daughter Nutaaq who were Inuit from Frobisher Bay; woman in sealskin parka with baby in hood Pen and ink and watercolour, John White.

The tattoo has long been thought an exotic eighteenth-century import to Europe, brought back on the skin of sailors from the islands of the South Seas. But though the Tahitian word tattau first came into English as tattow in the late eighteenth century through captain James Cook’s (1728-1779) account of his voyages to Polynesia, the practice of permanently marking the skin with needles and ink had existed in Europe from earliest times and was part of Europeans' everyday lives. In fact, when early seventeenth-century colonists described the painting and tattooing they observed on the skin of the native inhabitants of the so-called New World, they referred their readers to what was apparently an easy modern-day point of reference: the cross of Jerusalem that, along with several other designs, commonly adorned the bodies of European pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. As Recollet missionary Gabriel Sagard-Théodat (†1636) explains in his 1632 Grand voyage du pays des Hurons, the Amerindian tattoo “is pricked and made in the same way as are made and engraved on the flesh’s surface the Crosses that those returning from Jerusalem have on their arms, and it lasts forever.” Whether they knew someone who had gotten tattooed or had only read about it, the Jerusalem tattoo was a familiar commodity for Europeans of this period, a legible and legitimate form of permanent body marking worn by those Christians curious, brave, pious, or wealthy enough to have made the demanding journey.

Pilgrims regularly planned leisure time into their Holy Land travel itineraries to have themselves “marked” by Christian locals in Bethlehem or in Jerusalem at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, most often choosing their designs from a number of wood-block patterns. Jean de Thévenot (1633–1665), whose extensive wanderings included time in Palestine, describes the tattooing process in his popular 1665 Relation d’un Voyage fait au Levant: “We took all of Tuesday April 29 to have our arms marked, as ordinarily all Pilgrims do, it is the Christians of Bethlehem following the Latin rite who do this. They have several wooden blocks, from which you choose the ones that please you the most, then they fill them with powdered charcoal, then they apply them to you, so that they leave the mark of what is engraved. After that with their left hand they hold your arm whose skin is stretched taut, and in their right hand they have a little cane where there are two needles, that they dip from time to time into ink mixed with ox bile, and prick you with it following the lines marked by the wood block. . . . This surely hurts, and ordinarily provokes a fever that lasts but a short time, and the arms stay swollen to about three times their normal size during two or three days. After they have pricked the whole length of all these lines, they wash the arm, and look to see if there is any error, and if so they start again, and sometimes they go back over it up to three times. When they are done, they wrap your arm very tightly, and a scab forms that falls off two or three days later, and the marks remain blue, and never erase themselves, because the blood mixing with this pigment made of ink and ox bile, still shows inside under the skin.”

Ratge Stubbe’s tattooed arms 

Whatever other reasons Europeans may have had for traveling to the Levant, a sincere desire to gain physical proximity to the places where Christ and his entourage had lived and died strongly motivated those who made the journey. Most Holy Land pilgrims had themselves tattooed with scenes from Christ’s passion—Christ dying on Calvary, triumphantly rising from the dead above the Holy Sepulcher, or ascending into heaven from the Mount of Olives—as are clearly visible in this engraving of the arms of Hamburg native Ratge Stubbe, who traveled to the Holy Land in 1669. Stubbe’s right arm displays the Jerusalem cross, a potent cross with four crosslets that forms the center of the composite Jerusalem-Bethlehem seal, also partially visible on the right arm of the unknown pilgrim whose portrait is featured here, with the incomplete year of his pilgrimage beneath it, “166 .” The Jerusalem cross is flanked on either side by the palm branches of Bethphage, the town on the outskirts of Jerusalem where Christ first entered the city, welcomed by people laying branches on his path. Above these symbols are the three crowns of the Magi, and, at top center, the Bethlehem star. In Stubbe’s case, the seal is framed above and below by the names of the two holy cities in Roman capitals, with the date of his pilgrimage below.

Also featured in the portrait on the pilgrim’s right arm is a large rectangular shape with pointed appendages that reproduces the floor plan of the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the main chapel beneath the Church of the Nativity, celebrated as the birthplace of Christ. The custom tattooed map represents in detail the steps the pilgrim followed down into the subterranean chapel, the star he gazed upon and embraced, and the altars he knelt at in prayer, preserving forever in corporeal form the space through which his own body had passed. Similarly, the tattoo on the pilgrim’s left inner arm commemorates his visit to Nazareth, the birthplace of Christ, just as Stubbe’s tattoos memorialize his time at the Holy Sepulcher, Calvary, and the Mount of Olives. By reproducing monuments upon their skin, pilgrims thus made their own bodies living memorials to the physical and spiritual experience of traveling in the footsteps of Christ. Moreover, their tattoos offered enduring and infinitely portable mementos they could gaze on long after returning home, an emphasis on the visual consistent with the Catholic Reformation valorization of the image as a privileged medium for meditation.

Tattoos held not only spiritual meaning, but conferred worldly status as well. If returning pilgrims of the upper classes chose to commission engravings of their tattoos and portraits in which they proudly displayed their tattooed arms, it was because their tattoos had extraordinary value for the fashioning of their identities. Once Holy Land pilgrims reintegrated their communities, like honorary insignia, their tattoos distinguished them among their peers as having made the arduous journey to Palestine, contributing to an enterprise of self-fashioning that brought them enduring social prestige. In this portrait, the painter reinforces his subject’s identity as a man who has successfully traveled to foreign lands by placing a waiting ship in the background, the curtain drawn to show it, just as the man’s sleeves are purposefully pushed up to reveal his tattoos, the undone button hole featured prominently at center. The inclusion of a document that appears to be a certificate of induction into an honorary brotherhood, placed in parallel with the pilgrim’s tattooed arms that hold and gesture toward it, further reinforces the importance of his tattoos themselves as signs of distinction.

Guest blog courtesy of Katherine Dauge-Roth

Further Reading:

•  Katherine Dauge-Roth, Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France (New York and London: Routledge, 2020).
• Juliette Fleming, “The Renaissance Tattoo,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 31 (1997): 34–52. Also appears in Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) 61-82 and Juliette Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 79-112.
•  Mordechay Lewy, “Jerusalem unter der Haut. Zur Geschichte der Jerusalemer Pilgertätowierung,” trans. Esther Kontarsky, Zeitschrift für Religions und Geistesgeschichte 55.1 (2003): 1–39, first published in Hebrew under the English title “Towards a History of Jerusalem Tattoo Marks among Western Pilgrims,” Cathedra 95 (2000): 37-66.
• Robert Ousterhout, “Permanent Emphemera: The ‘Honourable Stigmatisation’ of Jerusalem Pilgrims” in Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel, ed. Renana Bartal and Hanna Vorholt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 94-109.

Title Image: Portrait of an unknown pilgrim who traveled to Palestine in the 1660s. Private collection. Photograph by Andy Olenick, with the portrait owner’s kind permission.

Image 1: Engraving of Ratge Stubbe’s tattooed arms by Hans Martin Winterstein in Johannus Lundius, Die Alten Jüdishchen Heiligtümer, Gottes-dienste und Gewohnheiten (Hamburg: Liebernickel, 1701), facing p. 732. Universtitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main.

Skin has featured prominently as a site of cross-cultural encounter in studies of colonial interactions. In addition to aspects such as skin colour and skin markings, European observers commented extensively on the purported smoothness of indigenous skins. For example, the Decades (1530) of the Italian historian in Spanish service, Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, described the Spanish explorers’ perception of the appearance of indigenous women of Hispaniola, whose “faces, chests, breasts, hands and other body parts were exceedingly smooth.” In his sexualised, almost paradisiacal portrayal, Peter compared the naked women to “the most beautiful Dryads, forest nymphs or fountain fairies spoken of by the ancients.” Similar tropes find echoes across early Spanish reports from the new worlds, many of which brought the readers’ attention to the clean, nude skin of newly encountered peoples, with a particular focus on women. According to these accounts, various practices contributed to the smooth and clean appearance of indigenous skin: regular bathing and the application of ointments, as well as removal of facial and body hair. Indigenous care for their skin made a deep impression on Spanish writers who struggled to reconcile their view of the apparent barbarity of naked indigenes with the sophisticated attention they paid to their bodies. How were these frictions negotiated in early Spanish reports?

Both in the Americas and the Philippines, one of the observations that most surprised the Spanish was the frequency with which indigenous people bathed: sometimes even three or four times a day. According to the Italian explorer in the service of Spain, Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), it was “due to their frequent bathing” that the “bodies [of Mesoamerican indigenes] are very smooth and clean.” Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo confirmed Vespucci’s observations in his Historia general de las Indias (1535), whilst adding a condescending remark that “if they go one or two days without washing, they develop a foul stench like that of the Black people of Guinea, which in some is unbearable.” In the Philippines, by contrast, bathing played into civilisational hierarchies in a different way. In the Boxer Codex, the author of an account of the Visayan people wrote that “both men and women bathe publicly once or twice a day, their bodies entirely exposed, but they do cover their private parts with their hands until submerged.” Whereas Oviedo sought to construct parallels between indigenous Americans and Black Africans, who were increasingly brought into the Iberian territories in shackles as slaves, the Boxer Codex underscored the Visayans’ innate modesty, suggestive of the hope that they would become civil subjects of the Castilian Crown.

Filipino indigenes shared the European understanding of bathing as a medical practice, for “it is in their baths that they find their best medicines.” The inhabitants of Manila held in particular regard the hot springs in today’s Los Baños, “some 12 miles up the stream” from the Spanish capital, which the indigenes frequented especially when suffering from various skin ailments. Already in 1592, Franciscan missionaries established the Hospital of the Holy Waters at the site. Spanish colonial hospitals were typically organised along ethnic lines, reflecting the Spanish colonial policies of segregation and hierarchisation. For example, in Manila, there were separate institutions for Spanish royal subjects, indigenous people and the Chinese minority. In Los Baños, however, “many Spaniards, indigenes and those of other nations, both men and women (who have separate quarters), were treated for cold humours and buboes.” In the hot waters of Los Baños, the Spanish policy of ethnic segregation dissolved.

In addition to bathing, the smoothness of indigenous skin in both Spanish America and the Philippines was associated with the removal of facial and body hair. As Oviedo described in his account of Spanish America, despite variations in customs and appearance “all the indigenes are commonly without beards; so much so that it is a marvel to see any men or women to have any hair on their faces or other parts of the body.” For Oviedo, this was a prime marker of difference between the indigenes and “the Christians.” In the Philippines, likewise, “neither men, nor women suffer hair to grow on their bodies, except on their scalps.” The removal of beards, which were understood as a sign of manhood and virility in European cultures, drew particular attention. As the English physician John Bulwer summarised in his Anthropometamorphosis (1650), “shaving the Chin is justly to be accounted a note of Effeminacy,” practised only by “scoffers of Nature, who with their Pincers fight against her!”

Woman, by contrast, “by Nature is smooth and delicate; and if she have many haires she is a Monster,” according to Bulwer. Women both in the Americas and the Philippines further underlined the smoothness and cleanliness of their bodies by using ointments and sweet-smelling perfumes. Filipino women were reported to use sesame oil infused with civet musk, two precious medical commodities to Europe. Therefore, whereas their hairless faces and bodies turned indigenous men into inferior and effeminate individuals, the smooth skin of their female counterparts made them all the more desirable in Spanish eyes.

The smooth indigenous body provided a rich source of metaphors for Spanish colonisers. The outward cleanliness of indigenous bodies raised questions about their inner, moral purity, which was dealt with differently by authors depending on their motivations. The Spanish soldier and later prominent official stationed in the Philippines, Antonio de Morga, wrote in 1609 that “the very clean and tidy” attitude towards their “physique and clothing” mirrored the Filipinos’ “pleasing character and grace.” Vespucci, by way of contrast, insisted that the “smooth and clean bodies” of Mesoamerican indigenes could not be taken as a reflection of their character, as “they are in all other things filthy and without shame” – especially with respect to their sexual activity.

Smooth skin also raised questions of indigenous agency. Kathleen Brown has argued that European writers commonly attributed the physical differences between themselves and the Amerindians to culture, rather than nature, due to the indigenes’ agency in treating their bodies and crafting their appearance. These representations contrasted sharply with the passive portrayal of enslaved Black Africans whose appearance was attributed primarily to the influences of climate or the biblical curse of Ham. At the same time, however, the smooth and clean indigenous body was interpreted as an invitation for the colonisers to leave their mark. In the preface to his 1555 English edition of early Spanish accounts of the Americas, Richard Eden wrote that “these simple gentiles lyvinge only after the lawe of nature, may well bee lykened to a smoothe and bare table unpainted, or a white paper unwritten, upon which yow may at the fyrst paynte or wryte what yow lyste.” The smooth indigenous body thus offered a blank slate to be inscribed at will by the coloniser.

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Image: Amerigo Vespucci’s encounter with American indigenes and their “very smooth and clean bodies,” from Theodor de Bry, Americae Pars Decima (Oppenheim, 1619), p.73.

Primary sources cited:

• Amerigo Vespucci, Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle Isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi  viaggi  (Florence, 1505).
• Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo decades (Alcalá, 1530).
• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general de las Indias (Seville, 1535).
• Richard Eden, The First Three English Books on America (London, 1555).
• Diego de Artieda, Relación de las Islas del poniente a que llamam Filipinas (Manila, 1573).
• The Boxer Codex, Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington. Available in digitised form online: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/omeka/lilly/items/show/93. For a modern English edition, see: G. B. Souza and J. S. Turley (ed., trans.), The Boxer Codex (Brill, 2016).
• Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (México, 1609).
• John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or the Artificial Changeling (London, 1650).

Further reading:

• Kathleen M. Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America (Yale University Press, 2009).

• Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation in the Early Years of Colonization,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997), 193–228.

Renaissance portraits often draw on the trope of the connection between powerful people and powerful animals.  Out-of-the-ordinary creatures were linked with the ruler in their special characteristics, including qualities of enviable skins. Exotic animals demonstrated their owners’ expansive horizons, their ability to possess items of the utmost rarity and expense, and their role as exemplars of the biblical command to claim dominion over all creatures (Genesis 1:26).  Lions or leopards, for instance, submitted to a hierarchy of dominion and were rendered tame to the ruler alone, in recognition of his rightful authority: over his animal; his household; his state; and beyond, over the natural, political and social worlds.

In this vein, rather than a little dog that might sleep at the foot of his subjects’ beds, Francis I of France was said to have slept in the company of a lion or other ferocious pet. (According to Pierre Belon du Mans, L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux… (Paris: Benoît Prévost, 1555), livre III, ch. 2: ‘comme nous tenons quelque petit chien pur compagnie, que faisons coucher sur les pieds de nostre lict pour plaisir: iceluy y avoit telles fois quelque Lion, Once, ou autre telle fiere beste’.) 

Portraits of Don Juan of Austria (illegitimate son of Charles V) and Ladislaus von Fraunberg, count of Haag, show these men’s princely virility and martial prowess and, while the count’s face bears a cragginess of mature experience, both sitters boast fair and healthy skin.  Next to Don Juan and Count Ladislaus are their exotic companion cats, whose plush fur contrasts with the skin of their owners.  The lion and leopard are representative of international deeds: Don Juan had taken the lion – who he named Austria - when he captured Tunis, and Count Ladislaus was given his leopard in Italy. Beyond the symbolic, these cats are also living animals (Austria reportedly slept in Don Juan’s rooms; the leopard was said to have been always in Ladislaus’s company, like a dog).  They are portrayed in a proximity that for anyone else might be lethal, but beside their owners represents a close companionship.

Hans Mielich, Portrait of Ladislaus von Fraunberg, Count of Haag, 1557, Liechtenstein Princely Collections.

While Austria was taken from within the fortress of Tunis (perhaps already tamed), he was nevertheless to be equated with local wild lions, whose ferocity is described by Gonzalo Argote de Molina. Such was the aggressiveness of these Tunisian lions, for example, that one had attacked a hunting party led by Don Garcia de Toledo, the lion leaping up to drag a rider from his horse and submitting the horse to a vicious attack, ripping into human and animal skin. Another time, during a hunt by Don Rodrigo de Benavides, a lion had been so frightening to encounter that a horse had dropped dead upon sight of the beast, an autopsy concluding the hidden cause of death to be a ruptured gall bladder brought on by terror.  While Don Juan’s Austria dutifully lies by his heels, visibly under perfect control of his owner, the lion’s muscular body, large claws, and fierce glare straight at the viewer are reminders not to mess with Don Juan and that this is not an animal for the rank and file.

Ladislaus’s leopard, whose name we do not know, does not make eye contact with the viewer, but gazes to the side like his owner, with the look of an animal alert and interested in the hunt, ready to bring down enemies.  Like Austria, this animal is perfectly docile towards his owner, a creature in whom he can truly trust, the leopard’s strong, spotted body is almost intertwined with Ladislaus’s legs.  Count and cat match each other, collared (the leopard’s bearing Ladislaus’s initials), and handsomely patterned in tones of black and gold. Ladislaus’s leopard is at once like a dog, but decidedly not a dog.  This portrait should be compared with Hans Mielich’s earlier portrayal of Ladislaus’s great enemy Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria with an imposing but less elegant lion.  Count Ladislaus’s political position was insecure in this period, and the portrait’s elaborate iconographic scheme and careful messaging attempt to present an image of righteousness and international clout.  It is not surprising that the count’s leopard is given a principal role in this display.

Renaissance court portraits depicting noble or royal sitters with rare companion animals can therefore reveal much about contemporary ideals of high-status human and animal skin, and about the depiction of power of elites over other people and over nature.  Furthermore these images suggest the relationship of sitters to actual, sentient animals with whom they lived in surprising intimacy.

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Title Image: Anonymous, Portrait of Don Juan of Austria, c. 1575, Museo del Prado.

References:

• Gonzalo Argote de Molina, Discurso de la Monteria fol. 10, prefix to the Libro de la monteria … (Seville: Andrea Pescioni, 1582).
• Pierre Belon du Mans, L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux… (Paris: Benoît Prévost, 1555).
• Sarah Cockram, ‘Interspecies Understanding: Exotic Animals and their Handlers at the Italian Renaissance Court’, Renaissance Studies, Special Issue on ‘The Animal in Renaissance Italy’, 31:2 (2017), 277-98.
• Stephan Kemperdick (ed.), The Early Portrait: From the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein and the Kunstmuseum Basel (Munich: Prestel, 2006), p. 104.
• Helmut Nickel, ‘A Heraldic Note about the Portrait of Ladislaus, Count of Haag, by Hans Mielich’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 22 (1987), 141-47.

Following from the previous blogpost on male sitters with big cats, two images from the Spanish court illustrate how elite female sitters could also be depicted with rare companion animals, to indicate gendered virtue and stately power, even from childhood. Sofonisba Anguissola’s portrait of Infanta Catalina Micaela and Alonso Sánchez Coello’s portrait of the infanta with her sister Isabella Clara Eugenia both depict smooth luminous skin of the girls alongside the impressive skin of exotic animal companions. The artists bounce light on human and animal skins and features, and on flowers, textiles, metals and jewels. Anguissola portrays both of Catalina Micaela’s unblemished white hands on silken fur as she pets and gently cradles her golden-chained marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), an emblem of its Brazilian homeland and the colonial reach and ambition of Catalina’s father, Philip II. 

In Sánchez Coello’s portrait, the two sisters’ pearlescent skin meets the fluffy coat of a dainty miniature spaniel and the vivid green feathers of an Indian parakeet (Psittacula krameri), the colour of the plumage echoed in the girls’ dazzling outfits. These precious, enchanting little animals are fitting for their owners, and, while other such creatures might misbehave, jump around, yap, shriek, make mess or smells, scratch or bite the soft skin that caresses them, the animals in these portraits are perfectly portable, gentle, and obedient to the authority of the young infantas. 

Attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, Daughters of Philip II, King of Spain, c. 1569–70. Royal Collection Trust.

Sitters such as the Infantas Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, and Don Juan, and Count Ladislaus in the previous blogpost, are portrayed skin to skin with exotics. In such portraits, the faultless skins of exceptional humans and animals combine with other markers of magnificence to create a demonstration of dynastic power and virtuous splendour.  The extent of real, lived interspecies bonds behind palace doors is not always easy to establish from these sources, nor is the real-life tractability or unruliness of these animals.  But the message in these portraits, and writings such as those of Pierre Belon and Gonzalo Argote de Molina, is clear: these people do not just have the chance to look at striking animals in palace menageries; or wear furs of remarkable creatures and feel these against their skin; they also get to touch living fur, run their fingers through beautiful and unusual pelts from faraway places as they go about the business of their days, play with delightful and thrilling companions, even feel the heat from breathing beastly bodies at their feet in bed.

These portraits are not just about ideal skins, human and animal, they are also about interactions of special skins, interactions at once familiar to the viewer - who might too stroke a cat or dog or bird – but also interactions, relationships and sensations out of the range of all but the few.

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Title Image: Sofonisba Anguissola, Infanta Catalina Micaela with a Marmoset, c. 1573, private collection.

References:

• Sarah Cockram, ‘Sleeve Cat and Lap Dog: Affection, Aesthetics and Proximity to Companion Animals in Renaissance Mantua’, in Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity, ed. by Sarah Cockram and Andrew Wells (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 34-65.
• Annemarie Jordan Gschwend and Almudena Pérez de Tudela, ‘Renaissance Menageries. Exotic Animals and Pets at the Habsburg Courts in Iberia and Central Europe’, in Karl A.E. Enenkel and Paul J. Smith (eds.), Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of. Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 427-55.
• Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, ‘The Emperor’s Exotic and New World Animals: Hans Khevenhüller and Habsburg Menageries in Vienna and Prague’, in Arthur MacGregor (ed.), Naturalists in the Field: Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 76–103, p. 95.