Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal (Jan 2016)
The Mystery of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Goiter
Abstract
Whilst painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo Buonarroti left an autographical sketch that revealed a prominence at the front of his hyper-extended neck. This image was recently diagnosed as goiter. The poet Michelangelo in a sonnet dated 1509 described himself as being afflicted by goiter similarly to the cats in the northern Italian Lombardy, a region with endemic goiter. Several narratives extended this sonnet into a pathological theory. The analyses of Michelangelo’s works, however, his portraits and self-portraits, of poems and major biographies, have not indicated the likelihood of goiter. This investigation makes an attempt to assess the diagnosis on clinical as well as iconographical grounds.
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