Luca Riva, a Deaf Painter in Spanish Milan

Abstract

On the night of September 9, 1624, a thirty-three-year-old painter named Luca Riva lay feverish and deathly ill in his bed in a candlelit room in the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan. Having been sick since July, in recent days he had begun to suffer from “an acute malign fever” and “unusual and dangerous fits.” Fearing that these were his final hours, a judge, a notary, protonotaries, and variouswitnesses had gathered in his room to record his last will and testament. Riva’s case was far from typical, for he had been born deaf and was also illiterate, which meant he was legally unable to write his own will and unable to communicate