Antonietta Gonzalez print – Ulisse Aldrovandi – 1599 Medieval art
This is a copy of a Medieval illustration originally drawn by the physician Ulisse Aldrovandi. It is of a twenty-year-old girl named Antonietta Gonzalez. The image is the first graphic description of Hypertrichosis Universalis, which is an extremely rare genetic condition that causes an abnormal amount of hair on the body. A condition often referred to as Werewolf syndrome. The condition is so rare in fact, that less than fifty cases have been documented worldwide since the 16th century. However, the condition is often hereditary and Antoinette and three of her siblings inherited the condition from their father. Given the rarity of the disease, it seems a little surprising that so many people within the Gonzalez family were affected. One writer noted that in terms of pathology, “the Gonzales sisters were one in a billion – all three of them.
Aldrovandi’s intriguing etching captures the 20-year-old Antonietta. e has annotated the illustration with the words ” Mulier viginti annorum hirsuto capite simiam imitating reliquo corpore glabro . “Woman of twenty years at the head, shaggy, like a monkey, and leaving the rest of the body is hairless.”
Antonietta and the Gonzalez family
Antonietta’s father was named Pedro Gonzales or Pedrus Gonsalvus. Pedro was born in the 1530s in Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands and taken as a child to the French court. King Henry II of France loved to collect oddities, including human “freaks”. At that time, it was even a symbol of wealth and status for royals to own dwarves as court jesters. Gonzales’s marriage to Catherine, a young Frenchwoman with normal hair, produced at least seven children. The couple’s eldest and youngest sons Paolo and Ercole and daughter Francesca were non‐hirsute. However, Pedro’s hypertrichosis was inherited by Madeleine, Henri, Antonietta, and Orazio. Their physical appearance and symptoms closely corresponded to perceptions of the medieval Wild Man tradition. Even Aldrovandi called him “the man of the woods.” Some thought they were half-animals and freaks of nature with terms such as “dog-faced girls” and “lion-men” being used to describe them. Others said they came from the ‘wild folk’ that were believed to live in Europe’s wilderness areas. However, contemporary European society was fascinated by the family. Antonietta and her sisters were welcomed into the courts of Europe, has received considerable attention from physicians and nobles alike, and also being subject to medical investigations and portrait sittings.
There is a fascinating, more in-depth article about the Gonzales family on the history collection website where much of our information has been obtained. The site goes on to describe the fate of the children:
“Since Petrus and his family were the property of the Queen, they had no choice or say in what happened to their children. Portraits were commissioned of the family, but the normal children were ordered to be kept out of the picture. The images of their family were sent off to nobles as gifts, and they were truly fascinated. Pictures of Petrus and his family hung in cabinets of curiosities. For some, a picture was not enough. The children with hypertrichosis were actually sold to other members of the nobility. It became apparent that Petrus and Catherine were being used to breed these unique babies. Thankfully, their children were treated very well, received high-quality educations, were fed and clothed well, had access to the best doctors, and lived in beautiful homes. Considering that they were the children of a man with an abnormality and a woman from the lower class, their children actually lived in a life of luxury compared to how their lives would have been if their parents were free.
Antoinetta, herself was given to a noble family in Bologna, Italy. The doctor Ulisse Aldrovandi visited her, and examined her body, taking notes about the hair on her body, and sketching her. In the Aldrovani drawing he produced, Antoinetta is wearing a beautiful dress that would have been very expensive, and she is wearing leaves and flowers in her hair, almost like a crown.
In a portrait by the artist Lavinia Fontana, Antonietta explains a little of her personal history in the handwritten note that she holds in the portrait: “Don Pietro, a wild man discovered in the Canary Islands, was conveyed to his most serene highness Henry the King of France, and from there came to his Excellency the Duke of Parma. From whom [came] I, Antonietta, and now I can be found nearby at the court of the Lady Isabella Pallavicina, the honorable Marchesa of Soragna.”
Ulisse Aldrovandi
Ulisse Aldrovandi was an Italian scholar of natural history and is considered a pioneer in the study of modern natural history. Aldrovandi is also credited with inspiring the naturalist movement in Northern Italy and Flanders through his connection to the Court of Medici. But at the same time, as he was documenting animals and insects with as much scientific accuracy as possible, he conjured images of mythical creatures and devious monsters. These images detailed the widely held belief in the supernatural that existed at the time he lived, paralleling scientific fact with terrifying imagination. Most of his work was published after his death in 1605. (wiki)
