Each of the images in the manuscript is contained within a dark border and all but three of the images (6, 36 and 48) have a short accompanying text in Italian below them. The texts, not all of which are in the same hand, give brief descriptions and, in some cases, other information, such as date or place. The manuscript was owned by David Lloyd Roberts (1835–1920), a gynaecologist in Manchester. Also in Lloyd Roberts’s collection was a copy of Fortunio Liceti’s (1577–1657) De monstris with a preface and an appendix by Gerard Blasius (1665), which contains the image of conjoined twins. (See ‘Monstrosum fœtum (Monstrous foetus),’ in Fortunio Liceti, De monstris (On Monsters).)

Image 24 in Italian MS 63 is described in the accompanying text as the ‘profile of a human monster copied from a drawing by [Leonardo da] Vinci from [the collection of] Sig[nore] Cav[aliere] Barb[erini], given to him by Giulio Mancini’ (‘Profilo di un mostro umano copiato da un disegno del Vinci del Sig. Cav. Barb. donatogli da Giulio Mancini’). It is similar, for example, to an image in Liceti’s book, De monstris (1665, page 135). Liceti described the monster as having ‘the head of two-faced Janus; and both sides had a penis instead of a nose; while another, with testicles, came out from the chin; at the roots of these monstrous noses [and] below them on each side equally were twin eyes …’. It was not possible to be certain whether the child was male or female. According to Liceti, the monster was a portent since it was born shortly before the King of France came down into Italy with his army. He stated further that an image had recently been sent to Padua, where he was a professor at the university from 1609 to 1637, by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) who wrote that it had been copied from a painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the museum of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. The right side of the image in Liceti shows the monster in profile. The image in Italian MS 63 appears to have been reversed with the larger penis pointing towards the left in the Rylands MS (towards the right in Liceti) possibly indicating that the compiler of Italian MS 63 had seen the original and that the engraving in Liceti’s publication had reversed the image.

Monstrous births were frequently interpreted as portents. In this context it is telling that Liceti mentioned that the penis-headed infant was born shortly before the King of France came into Italy with his army. Given that the original image was associated with Leonardo da Vinci, who died in 1519, it seems reasonable to place the date of the birth shortly before Charles VIII invaded Naples in 1494/1495. The first records of an outbreak of the disease popularly referred to as the French disease or French pox occurred during this invasion. Syphilis was known to affect the nose and the imposition of the penis as a nose on a monstrous child would have been an apposite illustration of the effect of foreign invasion through placing sexual parts of the body shockingly inappropriately on a small child’s face.

Cordelia Warr, University of Manchester