In 1547, celebrations were held in honor of the queen of Henry II of France. The guests brought the king many gifts never before seen in the French court, but only one gift caused a sensation – a monster that looked like a combination of an ape and a man that until then had only been read about in books or seen in nightmares. The king was shocked but also fascinated. He approached the wild creature cautiously, fearing that it might attack him, but then he discovered to his astonishment that it was a boy of about 11 years old, his entire body covered in hair.
Beauty and the Beast – The True Story
The boy was Petrus Gonzales, born in 1536 in the Canary Islands and suffering from hypertrichosis, a disease in which long hair covered his face and part of his body, making him look like an animal. The king was very intrigued by the wild child who looked like a hairy dog, and wondered what he would do with the amazing gift? Since Henry II loved knowledge and also understood that the wild child would bring glory to the French royal court, he turned to the scientists and scholars of his court and asked them to try to civilize the creature and educate him as a nobleman. For the first time in his life, Petrus Gonzales, the hairy boy, was treated like a human being: he received luxurious clothes, regular meals and not animal food or raw meat, and the education of a scholar.
Peter was a diligent and brilliant student, and many distinguished visitors from all over Europe came especially to France to see with their own eyes the king's hairy wild child, who, to their great surprise, was intelligent, learned, spoke excellent Latin, and wore magnificent court dress. The king showed him off like a tamed dog or monkey.
Unfortunately, Henry II, who was Peter's protector and mentor, was killed in a jousting tournament and his widow ascended to power in his place. Catherine de Medici, one of the cruelest queens in French history. When Peter was 17 years old, she decided to marry him to an ordinary girl to see what the children born from such a strange union would look like. The queen herself chose the bride, Catherine, a beautiful French girl who was the daughter of one of the palace servants. The bride was supposed to see the groom for the first time on the wedding day and of course when Catherine saw the groom she fainted. The bride quickly discovered that her new husband, a gentleman, a scholar, was simply a man with an illness. Peter and Catherine had 7 children, 4 of whom were defective.
Beauty and the Beast in the Mirror of Art
When Peter was 45 years old, the Gonzales family was sent to travel around Europe. The family wandered through the courts of kings and nobles, everywhere they were treated as curious, entertaining, civilized human beings who could speak and write. On this journey, they also reached the court of Duke Farnese of Parma. Peter was given an important position, managing the estate, but he could not save his children from a tragic fate. Peter and his family were not considered human, so they could give them away as gifts. Duke Farnese took Peter's youngest daughter, Antonietta, who was only 8 years old, and gave her as a gift to his mistress, Donna Isabella Falvecchina, the Countess of Sorana. One day, the Countess of Sorana was invited to dinner in Bologna, and to impress those present, she arrived at the meal fashionably late, accompanied by Antonietta. One of Bologna's most important scholars, Ulisa Aldrovandi, who was present at the meal, examined Antonietta, and asked his good friend, the painter Lavinia Fontana, to paint her.
Antonietta is depicted close to the foreground. She is dressed in the fashion of the period in a white blouse over a gray satin dress with embroidery and gold buttons, and a fashionable ornament on her head. Lavigne Fontana, who was herself a mother of children, tried to depict her, despite the defect she was born with, in a humane manner, and she does so in the way she depicts Antonietta and with the note in her hand. Her posture is upright and confident, her body is oblique, but her head is turned towards the viewer. Although her face is covered with hair, the hair appears soft and delicate. Lavigne emphasized her facial features, defined her eyes, her nose, and her small mouth painted red, so that a child can be seen under the hairy fur. Her direct, expressive gaze makes us look into her intelligent eyes and identify with her, her gaze saying, I am not what you think I am.
Antonietta holds a paper with details about her life: “Don Pietro, a savage discovered in the Canary Islands, was delivered to His Majesty King Henry France, and from there came to His Highness the Duke of Parma. From him [came] I, Antonietta, and now I can be found nearby at the court of Lady Isabella Falvecchina, the distinguished Marchioness of Sorana.” The letter briefly tells her story, showing the viewer that she is a person of identity, a scholar, and living in a noble court.
How was the legend created?
The portrait of Antonietta and her family is the first painted testimony of people who suffered from this disease. Most people in the 16th century saw Antonietta and her family as human animals, only a very few saw them as people with unnecessary hair. The story has a happy ending: the Gonzales family finally escaped the world of the courts, the family members moved one by one to the small Italian village of Capodimonte where they settled and finally disappeared from history. Their traces remained in the town's records, as "those hairy goats". Gonzales died at the age of 80 (in 1618). Those who really want to see the painting of Antonietta will have to travel to the castle Blois, where the painting hangs behind glass, in the bedroom where Queen Catherine de Medici died.
Image source: https://en.chateaudeblois.fr/2464-the-royal-apartments.htm
Thus, without intending to, the Queen of France, Catherine de Medici, created the basis for the famous legend of Beauty and the Beast. This interesting story about a family, part of which suffered from hypertrichosis, became known about 150 years later to Mrs. Gabrielle Suzanne Barbo de Villeneuve, who, following this family story, wrote the book Beauty and the Beast (1740), one of the most beloved books even today.