We have seen many people post here of their fascination with necks - trying to identify the goitre on all who appear on television, in magazines, and even real people around us - for them, this is surely a must-read paper!
Very happily, the paper is in PubMed Central so is freely accessible. It contains several reproductions so we can see what the authors are writing about. As this is Thyroid UK, with most members in the UK, the fact that the paintings are in the National Gallery in London is further good news.
Indian J Endocrinol Metab. 2018 Mar-Apr; 22(2): 283–286.
doi: 10.4103/ijem.IJEM_13_18
PMCID: PMC5972490
The Goitrous Salting Madonnas: Iconography of Goiter in Religious Portraits
Davide Lazzeri and Fabio Nicoli1
Abstract
George Salting was an art collector, who bequeathed his collection of paintings to the National Gallery of London. The present investigation has revealed five portraits of five different artists belonging to this collection in which the Holy Mother holding the child has been portrayed with a variable grade of thyroid gland enlargement. The name Salting, applied to the Madonnas with child by Antonello da Messina, Robert Campin, Dirk Bouts, Cima da Conegliano, and Andrea del Verrocchio, denotes George Salting, the collector who donated the masterworks to the gallery in 1910.
Full paper freely accessible here:
