Tognina Gonsalvus

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Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614): Tognina
Petrus Gonsalvus , father of Tognina. (16th century); Schloss Ambras (Tirol)

Tognina (Antonia?) Gonsalvus , also Conzalves or Conzales (* around 1580 in France , exact life dates unknown) was a so-called monkey girl . Her family is considered to be the oldest reported case of excess human hair in Europe .

Life and family

Antonia has been depicted in various paintings and prints both as a little girl and as a young woman and has been handed down to this day under the name Tognina . She grew up in Fontainebleau and belonged to the court society of King Henry II of France. She is mentioned above all in reports about her family.

Tognina's father, Petrus Gonsalvus , was born in Tenerife in 1556 . As a child he came to the court of Henry II, where he was initially kept in the house as a monkey and only paid attention to the adolescent. Petrus, who is said to have spoken Latin, was joined by a woman who had no abnormal body hair. The couple had several children, some of whom, including Antonia, had inherited their father's disease. Heinrich made part of the Fontainebleau park available to the family with the intention of providing a natural environment and protection for his subjects. The "ape men" regularly took part in social events, dressed in courtly robes, and little Tognina always outfitted like a doll. The Gonsalvus family probably traveled to Italy around 1580/90; her stay at the court of Margaret of Parma is mentioned.

This very rare form of hypertrichosis is also known as Ambras syndrome .

Reception and afterlife

The excessive hairiness of part of the family soon caught the interest of the scholars. The Italian doctor and naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) reported in his Monstrorum Historia from 1642 in detail about the family, where he mentions Ambras in Tyrol as their place of residence . Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol and Rudolf II had set up a chamber of art and curiosities in the castle there for a huge collection of art and curiosities , which also houses a painting by the Gonsalvus family, made by the court painter Rudolf II, the Antwerp miniaturist Georg Hoefnagel . Hoefnagel also handed down the family as a special species in a sketchbook for Animalia Rationalia et Insecta .

The Italian painter Agostino Carracci (1557–1602) depicted in a painting from 1596 (today in the Galleria Nazionale in Naples ) next to Pietro , the fool, and Amon , the dwarf, also Arrigo, the hairy one; Lavinia Fontana made a picture of little Tognina. A hairy Horatio Gonzales lived in Rome and was portrayed by the engraver Stefano della Bella (1610–1664), who also has a drawing of a dead elephant .

literature

  • Hans Scheugl: Show Freaks & Monsters. Felix Adanos Collection . DuMont publishing house: Cologne, 1978; P. 33ff. with illus
  • Roberto Zapperi : The wild man of Tenerife. The miraculous story of Pedro Gonzalez and his children . Munich, CH Beck 2004 ISBN 978-3-406-44792-1