Cultural, Artistic, Physical, Medical and Physiological Aspects Fuseli's Mad Kate

Abstract

The portrait of Mad Kate has an uncomfortable and emotional effect on its spectators that are forced to confront with her direct gaze. To heighten this effect, Kate was depicted facing a stormy sea lit by flickering bizarre brown shades of light. Mad Kate is a masterpiece drawn by the English Swiss born artist Henry Fuseli. The interpretation of his Mad Kate was made as a dissent against the ferocious treatment of lunatics by society and particularly the treatment of madwomen. Kate was regarded as insane by the contemporary society, because she was painted about thirty years before exophthalmos with goiter was discovered by the Western medicine. Kate was not crazy, but a visual imaging of thyrotoxic with Graves ophthalmopathy. This work is multidisciplinary, as it integrates remote disciplines such as; art, history, culture, psychology, medicine, evolutionary-biology and neurobiology (each discipline/chapter is the prelude to its successor). Furthermore, by the use of these tools I have managed to provide an insight into the various motifs and the scientific knowledge that Fuseli (who was regarded as a Renaissance man by his contemporaries) skillfully managed to incorporate in the depiction of Mad Kate.