Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany
Jennifer Spinks
Pickering & Chatto Ltd
Dramatically physically deformed children and animals were a source of fascination and fear - though seldom pity - in early modern Europe. Notorious cases include the 1495 conjoined twins of Worms, the Monk Calf of 1523, and a seven-headed baby born in Eusrisgo in 1573. This study is an examination of printed representations of monstrous births in German-speaking Europe from the end of the fifteenth century and through the sixteenth century, beginning with a seminal series of broadsheets from the late 1490s by humanist Sebastian Brant, and including prints by Albrecht Durer and Hans Burgkmair.In the sixteenth century these births were of particular importance in German-speaking areas that were caught up in the religious conflicts of the Reformation and early Counter-Reformation. While interest flared periodically in France, the Netherlands, and Italy, the most sustained and voluminous publications emerged from German regions.  During this period intellectual and theological debates, popular belief and visual culture reflected a preoccupation with phenomena that were simultaneously natural and unnatural, including showers of blood, comets and other strange apparitions in the sky, and - the topic of this study - monstrous births.