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  • Monstrous – Marvellous
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Foreign Bodies

  • Bodies – Inside & Outside
  • Monstrous – Marvellous
  • Global – Local
  • People
  • Acknowledgements
  • Publications

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Bodies – Inside & Outside Gallery

  • The garden of health
  • Blind man with remedy for corns
  • Head of the Virgin
  • Guidonian hand
  • Title: Woman’s smock Place:England Date: c. 1600 Medium & technique: Linen, hand-embroidered with coloured silks Dimensions: 40 x 1390 mm (bodice and sleeves) Themes: Bodies - Inside & Outside Collection: (c) the Whitworth, The University of Manchester The embroideries shown in this detail – featuring carnations, foxgloves and honeysuckle – decorate an early-seventeenth-century woman’s smock, or shift. Originally full length, only the patterned bodice and sleeves have survived and it is likely that the owner cut off the plain, lower half of the garment after the linen became marked or damaged. One of the functions of an undergarment like this smock was to draw sweat and impurities away from the body and various contemporary authors mused on the consequences of wearing dirty or clean linens. From sweet-smelling flowers to a shower of raindrops and clouds anticipating a storm, the embroideries on the smock remind us of the influence of the environment on the body and the role of this garment in shielding the wearer from the hazards of bad air and excess heat or cold. Elizabeth Currie, Victoria and Albert Museum/ RCA
    Woman’s smock
  • Great Horse of Troy
  • Office of the Dead
  • Liturgical gloves
  • Nightcap
  • Profile of a human monster
  • Monstrous foetus
  • King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria
  • Surgery patient