Allegory of Sickness

This rare and unusual composition was engraved by Giorgio Ghisi and is based on the left side of a fresco by Giulio Romano decorating the vault of the loggia of the Appartamento del Giardino Segreto in Palazzo Te, in Mantua. Ghisi himself was from Mantua and was presumably commissioned to engrave this scene of sickness and healing for a wider audience, which was not able to see the wall painting in situ at the palace.
The engraving shows a group of people attending to a sick man lying prone on a bed, while a doctor practices cupping on him. A woman seated at the foot of the bed appears to suffer from nausea. The scene has no apparent literary source and has been interpreted quite generally as an allegory of sickness. Another printed version of the subject, by Antonio Fantuzzi (see Jenkins AF10), reproducing the complete fresco in a oblong format, was probably made with a now lost drawing as a model, rather than the finished painting.
To our knowledge, no other example of the present engraving has been offered at auction within the last thirty years.