An Illness of the Body and Soul: Visual Cultures of the French Disease in Early Modern Italy, 1495-1700 Público
Kelly, Ryan (Spring 2021)
Abstract
The French Disease was a deadly and disfiguring venereal sickness that struck Europe in the late fifteenth century, and is considered today to be syphilis amalgamated with various other venereal diseases. It allegedly arrived on the European continent through the infected bodies of mercenaries recently returned from Columbus’s 1492 journey, and was spread through Italy after they enlisted in King Charles VIII of France’s army as part of his quest to claim the throne of the Kingdom of Naples. The French Disease subsequently diffused across the European continent as a horrifying affliction, capable of rendering individuals across the social hierarchy permanently infected and physically deformed.
This thesis aims to define a visual iconography of the French Disease in early modern Italy from 1495 to 1700, and address how such an iconography developed in the context of shifting attitudes towards sex and sexual morality, health and the body, and systems of social welfare. It is concerned with the construction of the “diseased” identity in early modern popular culture, and considers early modern theories regarding the French Disease’s origins, who was vulnerable to infection, who was responsible for its spread, and how it could be cured. These theories are explored through analyses of a wide variety of popular media – prints, paintings, broadsheets and verses – and supplemented by some discussion of state and medical responses to the disease.
What emerges from this work is both a chronological survey of how the French Disease was depicted in its initial centuries in Italy, as well as a novel framework from which to consider disease imagery. Contemporary theories of disease that implied internal and moral causes allow the scope of French Disease art to expand beyond explicit depictions of physical symptoms to images of sexual sin and immorality that early modern viewers would have associated with venereal disease. By tracing the history of French Disease imagery, this demonstrates how images both drew upon and entrenched connections between morality and venereal disease, and shows how and why female sex workers were pictured as the primary vectors for the spread of venereal disease.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Arrival of the French Disease ………….…………………………………… 1
Chapter One: Job and the “Worthless Physicians” …………………………………………… 13
Chapter Two: Mary Magdalene and the Dangers of Beauty …………………………………. 33
Chapter Three: The Courtesan and the Rake: Deixis and Disease Narrative Prints …………. 53
Conclusion: An Iconography of Illness ……………………………………………………….. 69
About this Honors Thesis
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An Illness of the Body and Soul: Visual Cultures of the French Disease in Early Modern Italy, 1495-1700 () | 2021-04-13 09:38:04 -0400 |
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