Portraiture and Disability

Within disability studies and medical humanities, “retrospective diagnosis” has become a controversial practice associated with medical perspectives that fail to appreciate the complexities of the source material, thereby foreclosing further engagement or analysis. This article argues that some approaches to retrospective diagnosis can possess more radical potential, particularly when the interpretation is informed by crip politics. It draws responses to two famous, contrasting early modern portraits that have been subject to diagnostic interpretations linked to facial difference—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Quinten Massys’s The Old Woman —into dialogue with a number of disabled artists and writers who engage with historical materials in their creative practice, including Riva Lehrer, Polly Atkin, and Ariel Henley. This article thus employs insight from disability theory to bridge histories of medicine, art, and disability to demonstrate how diagnostic readings of historical sources can raise questions and, most importantly, challenge ableist assumptions of what the human body looks like. Reading diagnostically, perhaps playfully so, is not only the purview of medical practitioners, but a potential tool for disabled people to find historical representation, resonance, and inspiration for new creative expression.