Chambers of Flemish tapestry served as prestigious, portable decoration for early modern courts across Europe. In the second half of the sixteenth century, a number of noble patrons commissioned tapestries that prominently featured highly naturalistic zoological and botanical imagery. Drawing upon zoological treatises, medical and physiognomic literature, fables, printed emblemata,...
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many images of dwarves, hirsutes, and castrati depict them in the guise of the monstrous, either as jokes of nature or indices of courtly wit. However, there are some Renaissance portraits of physically deformed individuals that transcend these categories. These portraits point to the...