The Lancet
Oncology by Emma Nicholls
PERSPECTIVES|HISTORY OF MEDICINE| VOLUME
19, ISSUE 8, P1023-1024, AUGUST 01, 2018
Walking around galleries
of great Renaissance art, many visitors have found themselves staring in
puzzlement at female nudes who seem to have oddly shaped breasts. In recent
years, a number of medical specialists, working in partnership with art
historians, have argued that we should be less quick to dismiss these apparent
malformations as the result of artistic ineptitude. Instead, they argue that to
the trained eye, these bulges, depressions, and retractions unmistakably signal
the willingness of Renaissance artists to depict women with breast pathologies.
