The Goitrous Salting Madonnas: Iconography of Goiter in Religious Portraits

[helvella]

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:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[BadHare]

Whatever next!

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to BadHare]

A very literal answer:

A 150 page PDF of goitres in art around the world. Some of the pictures could be upsetting.

dn3g20un7godm.cloudfront.ne...

And a more statistical approach:

faculty.washington.edu/andc...

[BadHare in reply to helvella]

I wonder if any of our endocrinologists would be interested?

[crimple in reply to BadHare]

Why would they (most endos) be interested in the glaringly obvious?! They don't do symptoms, visible or otherwise. TSH is the only thing of interest to them

[TSH110 in reply to BadHare]

They might learn something! I never had a goitre so I have no idea if they actually take any notice of them and act more swiftly. They did in my mother’s case but hers was grotesquely huge choaking her to death - she refused to get it looked at until it was life threatening. Emergency chemo shrunk it by half in 24 hours she was lucky to survive abdcget 8 good years before it came back and was untreatable.

[BadHare in reply to TSH110]

I did, but the ****tards said it was normal.

[Judithdalston in reply to helvella]

The 150 pages are interesting. I know lots of these images well, had never thought of them as goitres, just that 'fat' necks on young women/Mary was just aesthetically appealing.

[TSH110 in reply to Judithdalston]

Can’t wait to browse through those!

[Judithdalston]

Interesting. I was brought up being very aware of 'Derbyshire Neck' in women born c.1890-1900 in North Derbyshire/Sheffield. I think the idea of beauty seen in post partum hypo mothers is great!

[TSH110 in reply to Judithdalston]

My grandma had Derbyshire neck - she was born around then a just a bit more south still the penines tho.

[Marz]

Glad I'm not alone in my madness !

[TSH110]

It is one of my obsessions - I have a high success rate via neck diagnosis too 😂🤣😂

Apparently, Singer Sargeant painted a portrait of a young lady who was suffering from hypothyroidism it was on Tate gallery Walks - very interesting series with excellent art historian whose first name is Gus forget his surname it’s double barrelled.