“Doctors love to play the diagnosis game,” admitted Dr. Michael Marmor, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University and the author of several books on artists and vision. Most doctors report their findings only to patients. But there is an entire subculture of doctors who are fascinated by the medical histories of famous deceased artists and how these ailments influenced their work.

Art and Medicine: Secrets of the diseases of great artists, revealed by doctors

 

Art history and medicine have one important thing in common: both disciplines require careful observation and some inference, which attracts practitioners who love a good puzzle. Recently, these two areas have begun to intersect even more. Medical schools in the United States are increasingly incorporating art classes into their curricula, and research shows that studying art improves doctors' observational skills. This explains why some doctors show interest in the life and work of masters of art.

Peer-reviewed medical journals are replete with studies diagnosing illnesses of deceased artists. Conclusions are based both on doctor's notes and, in rare cases, on analysis of physical remains. But most often, luminary doctors turn to the works of masters for tips.

This should be treated simply as a game. Dr. Marmor warns that doctors often use imprecise values and go too far in their conclusions. “Artists have the right to paint how they want, so style can change and it doesn’t necessarily indicate illness,” he said. “Speculation is always fun, but not when it’s presented in scientific journals as ‘evidence’.” The seven published studies discussed below used a variety of inventive methods. Scientists have tried to build a more complete painting of artists' physical health in an attempt to better understand their work.

Michelangelo's Sick Hands

 

One day, Michelangelo, who was already approaching eighty, wrote to his nephew that his hands, his main instrument, caused him great pain. “Keeping notes gives me great discomfort,” lamented the Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. And if writing was not easy for him, then working with a hammer and chisel on a solid block of Carrara marble was probably simply unbearable. But modern doctors still cannot determine exactly what kind of joint disease the famous sculptor’s fingers suffered from.

Authorities at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, where Michelangelo is buried, have banned the exhumation of his remains for pathological examinations. So a team of five medical experts approached the problem creatively. In their 2016 study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, doctors decided to rely on three portraits of the artist - two during his lifetime and one later copy. They concluded that Michelangelo had osteoarthritis (damage to cartilage and surrounding tissue) caused by years of working with stone.

Leonardo da Vinci's squint

Artists see the world differently, and some ophthalmologists attribute this creative vision to their own vision. A 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association claims that Leonardo da Vinci had strabismus. This disorder results in a loss of depth perception—an affliction that could explain the Renaissance master's extraordinary abilities. If Leonardo did have a squint, it would be "quite convenient for the artist," writes study author Christopher Tyler. He believes that looking at the world with one eye allows you to directly compare nature with a drawn or painted flat image.

 

In his study, Tyler compared six works in which the artist is believed to have depicted himself, including Salvator Mundi and Vitruvian Man. The scientist justified his choice with the words of Leonardo that all his works, to one degree or another, reproduce himself. The ophthalmologist then measured the angular discrepancy of the pupils in these works and averaged it. This indicator corresponded to strabismus.

El Greco's Distorted Vision

In 1913, ophthalmologist Hermann Beritens questioned whether Spanish Renaissance artist El Greco's dramatically elongated figures were a stylistic move. He claimed that the artist had severe astigmatism. This is a distortion of vision that occurs because light is unevenly focused on the retina. This must have forced the master to actually see vertically elongated figures, which he then transferred to the canvas. Beritens' theory explained El Greco's uniqueness and caused a sensation when it hit the newspapers.

 

Almost a century later, another researcher realized that Beritens' logic was intuitive but flawed. In a 2002 study published in Leonardo, University of California psychologist Stuart Anstis argued that if El Greco had astigmatism, his vision would have distorted both his models and their images. In other words, if El Greco painted a portrait of a nobleman, then both the portrait and the sitter should have looked equally altered in his eyes - then this would have confirmed the diagnosis. But Anstis conducted experiments that showed that people with astigmatism could draw proportional objects. “El Greco’s elongation was an artistic expression, not a symptom of vision problems,” Anstis concluded. The theory he debunked is now known as the “El Greco fallacy.”

The mysterious death of Paul Gauguin

When post-impressionist Paul Gauguin died in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, he left behind four teeth in a glass jar and many speculations about syphilis as the cause of death. The opportunity to answer a number of unanswered questions related to his legacy arose in 2000. Then these teeth were extracted from a sealed well not far from the artist’s former hut. Caroline Boyle-Turner, a Gauguin specialist, first wanted to confirm that they really belonged to a Frenchman, and then see what could be learned from them.

 

While on a cruise in the South Pacific, she accidentally met William Mueller, one of the founders of the Dental Anthropological Association. The scientists began a joint study, the results of which were published in the journal Anthropology in 2018. DNA extracted from the teeth was compared with DNA obtained from the buried remains of the artist's father previously discovered in Chile, as well as with a sample provided by Gauguin's living grandson. The results were the same. Then the molars were checked for traces of cadmium, mercury and arsenic, which were the traditional treatment for syphilis in those days - and nothing was found.

However, this does not necessarily mean that Gauguin was not a syphilitic. This indicates that he did not take such a medicine, or at least not in the dosage that leaves traces.

Abstract view of Claude Monet

Impressionist artist Claude Monet created his expressive works, close to abstract, already at the end of his career. And a 2015 case study published in the British Journal of General Practice claimed that innovation was driven by poor vision. After sixty years, Monet began to develop age-related bilateral cataracts, which dulled the colors of the surrounding world. In 1913, an ophthalmologist recommended that he undergo cataract surgery. The artist refused, afraid of an unsuccessful operation in front of his colleague Mary Cassatt. He ordered labels to be put on tubes of paint so as not to make a mistake in choosing a color.

 

But a decade later, Monet still agreed to intervene. And in 1923, the true colors of the paintings created before the operation appeared before his renewed gaze. He destroyed many of them and after recovery returned to his original color palette. “Monet’s post-operative works are devoid of bright colors and impasto,” notes ophthalmologist and author of the article Anna Grüner. “It is therefore unlikely that he deliberately moved towards a more abstract style in his later works.” This strengthens the argument that these works were the result of cataracts rather than conscious experimentation with expressionism."

Metaphysical hallucinations of Giorgio de Chirico

What, besides boundless imagination, helped the 20th century Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico create metaphysical images that permeate his mysterious canvases? An article published in 2003 in the journal European Neurology suggested that temporal lobe epilepsy may be the answer. This is a neurological condition that in some cases causes complex hallucinations. In his book Hebdomeros (1929), de Chirico himself wrote that the paintings reflected his hallucinatory experiences. This discovery puzzled doctors, who tried to determine whether the artist's visions were the result of migraines with aura or temporal lobe epilepsy.

 

The article notes that migraines usually resulted in subjects having blurred or deformed vision, which is not typical for de Chirico’s work. His combination of several realities is more similar to the complex images that arise during partial seizures. However, the study author acknowledges that while artists' neurological histories may provide additional information, "they often lack important clinical data, so the final diagnosis remains controversial."

Autoimmune disease of the “degenerative” Paul Klee

The last five years of the life of the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee were fruitful. He created almost 2,500 works of art—a quarter of his entire oeuvre. But this work was the most physically exhausting for him. Klee suffered from a combination of skin diseases, ulcers, anemia and a swollen esophagus. During his lifetime, he was not given a definitive diagnosis, and almost 40 years after his death, these ailments became of interest to the young dermatologist-trainee Hans Suter. For decades, he reconstructed the artist's medical history, spoke with Klee's widow and only son, and studied unpublished letters describing symptoms.

 

Suter summarized his findings in a book and article that were published in 2010. He concluded that Klee had a rare autoimmune disease, diffuse systemic sclerosis. Although it doesn't seem to have influenced his artistic style. But Suter believes that the disease worsened after certain stressful events in the life of the abstract artist. These include his dismissal from his position as a professor at the Düsseldorf College of Art, critical reviews of avant-garde works and the stigma of a “degenerate” artist imposed by the Nazis.