La Mujer Barbuda
by: Jusepe de Ribera
Ribera's painting is the portrait of the fifty-two-year-old Magdalena Ventura from Abruzzi with her husband and a newborn baby.
The stone tablet at the right of the picture bears a Latin inscription which tells us more about this unlikely trio: the inscription describes the "The Bearded lady of Abruzzi" as "a great wonder of nature" who bore her husband three sons before sprouting a bushy, undeniably masculine beard at the age of thirty-seven.
The inscription points out, Magdalena's shock of facial hair "seems more like that of any bearded master than that of a woman who has borne three sons. "
The stone tablet at the right of the picture bears a Latin inscription which tells us more about this unlikely trio: the inscription describes the "The Bearded lady of Abruzzi" as "a great wonder of nature" who bore her husband three sons before sprouting a bushy, undeniably masculine beard at the age of thirty-seven.
The inscription points out, Magdalena's shock of facial hair "seems more like that of any bearded master than that of a woman who has borne three sons. "
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