A Case Study of the Blind Healer in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

The Baillieu Library’s Print Collection, which is part of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Melbourne, focuses primarily on the period between 1470 and 1850, having grown out of an initial donation of prints by Dr John Orde Poynton in 1959. Poynton’s collection comprises a diverse representation of European print practitioners, such as D€ urer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth. Unnoticed for many years in a drawer of miscellaneous pictures was a ‘foreign body’, an engraving from 1597–1601 depicting a blind man, which the catalogue record stated was ‘A Grotesque’ (fig. 1). This title was adopted from a handwritten inscription on the backing support. The Connecting Collections project inspired its reassessment in the collection, and as an early modern depiction of the blind healer. The subject of blindness occurs in works of art in the early modern period through biblical themes, such as Christ healing the blind man (John, 9:1–12). It is also a device used for purposes of allegory and metaphor, such as the blind leading the blind and the parable of the blind men and an elephant—an Eastern story of a group of blind men describing an elephant by feel and each coming up with such disparate accounts that they suspect each other of lying. In the early modern period blindness could occur from many circumstances, including war injury, disease, accident, or divine intervention. The blind could expect a life of hardship and poverty: abandoned and left to cling to the fringes of society, and frequently in the role of beggar. However, in art and literature, and in the imagination, the blind were also believed to be endowed with almost supernatural gifts that stemmed from their other heightened senses. As well as acute hearing and choral ability, the blind were understood to be gifted with an inner sight that could perhaps penetrate to truths that the sighted could not perceive. Villamena’s image of a blind man contains elements of social history, and metaphor, but also provides evidence for the practice of medicine and healing. The title, Cieco da Rimedio per i Calli (Blind Man, or Blind Man with Remedy for Corns), relates to a popular genre of prints of street criers that first emerged in Paris in 1500, and then spread to other European cities. This broadsheet style of