Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828). Self-portrait with Doctor Arrieta (1820).

摘要

“Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta for the skill and care with which he saved his life in his acute and dangerous illness suffered at the end of the year 1819 at the age of 73. He painted it in 1820” (1) reads the inscription at the bottom of Goya’s self-portrait on this month’s cover of Emerging Infectious Diseases. An affirmation of medical practice, the painting is also an acknowledgment of human compassion, a quality the artist thought extremely rare. Conflicted in his acceptance of the world and in his portrayal of it and deeply mistrustful of human nature, Goya lingered on the dark side as he painted the full spectrum of life experiences (2,3). During his long artistic career, he dwelled on the tensions of Spanish society of his day, whose institutions, including medicine, he gleefully satirized (e.g., Of What Illness Will He Die?) (4).