That dude looks like a lady, or is it the other way around?

In Plato’s Symposium, he wrote “The original human nature was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were originally three in number, not as they are now; there was man, woman and the union of the two having a double nature; they once had a real existence, but it is now lost, and the name only is preserved as a term of reproach.” [1]

Ulisse Aldrovandi's had one of the first wunderkammer collections to become famous. The collection of oddities from around the world contained medical and physical deformations in animals and humans. In his 1642 text Monstrorum Historia, he shows an image of a hermaphrodite [fig.1]. Considered monsters or freaks at the time, hermaphrodites were feared and misunderstood for their duality. Jusepe de Ribera in Spain 1631, took the latter approach, he admired the women who had features of men. The portrait he painted of Magdelena Ventura With Her Husband and Son does not depict a monster.[2] Magdelena is female with hirsutism, she is breastfeeding her child with her husband in the back [fig.2]. Andrea Sacchi painted a famous eunuch named  Marcantonio Pasqualini [fig.3]. Similar to Ribera, Sacchi celebrates Pasqualini for his victory in a musical competition with Apollo crowning him while the loser watches.

The works show androgyny in different ways; at times they are praised for double nature and other times they are ridiculed and tortured. "In 1559, Antide Collas who lived as a woman was burned in Dole, France, once doctors concluded that the malformation of her genitals was the result of 'criminal relations' with the devil. She was tortured, forced to confess her crime, and burned alive in front of the populace at the town square." [3]

1. Hermaphrodites were often categorized as monsters of prodigious birth. The belief was that women who sinned or made deals with the devil produced deformed offspring. See Zirpolo, “Depicting Sexual Deformity in Early Modern Art: Scientific, Medical, and Socio-Cultural Considerations, Part I-Excess and Absence.”

2. Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) painted Magdelena Ventura and used her image as a sign of power and strength. See Lilian H. Ziripolo, “Depicting Sexual Deformity in Early Modern Art: Scientific, Medical, and Socio-Cultural Considerations, Part II- Female Hisutism," in Vanishing Boundaries: Scientific Knowledge and Art Production in the Early Modern Era, ed. A. Victor Coonin and Lilian H. Zirpolo, 191-222 (Ramsey, NJ: WAPACC Organization, 2015)

3. See Zirpolo, “Depicting Sexual Deformity in Early Modern Art: Scientific, Medical, and Socio-Cultural Considerations, Part I-Excess and Absence.”