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A Hanged From the Past. Medical Consideration on the Judas Iscariot Fresco—
Chapelle Notre-Dame-des-Fontaines, La Brigue (15th Century)

Article in The American journal of forensic medicine and pathology: official publication of the National Association of Medical Examiners · January 2016

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 ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A Hanged From the Past
Medical Consideration on the Judas Iscariot Fresco—Chapelle
Notre-Dame-des-Fontaines, La Brigue (15th Century)
Raffaele Gaeta, MD and Antonio Fornaciari, PhD
Abstract: The medieval chapel of Notre Dame-des-Fontaines (Our Lady
of the Fountains), in the French Maritime Alps, is entirely covered by the
fresco cycle of the Passion (15th century) that depicts the last days of Jesus
from the Last Supper to the Resurrection. Under a small window, there is
the brutal representation of the suicide of Judas Iscariot, hanging from a
tree, with the abdomen quartered from which his soul, represented by a
small man, is kidnapped by a devil. The author, Giovanni Canavesio, rep-
resented the traitor's death with very detailed anatomical structures, differ-
ently thus from other paintings of the same subject; it is therefore possible
to assume that the artist had become familiar with the human anatomy. In
particular, the realism of the hanged man's posture, neck bent in an unnat-
ural way, allows us to hypothesize that it probably comes from direct obser-
vation of the executions of capital punishment, not infrequently imposed by
the public authorities in low medieval Italy.
Key Words: hanging, art-Judas, La Brigue
(Am J Forensic Med Pathol 2016;00: 00–00)
T he medieval chapel of Notre Dame-des-Fontaines (Our Lady
of the Fountains) is located in the French Maritime Alps, near
the little town of La Brigue, in the Roya Valley adjacent to the
French-Italian border (Fig. 1). The first document that mentions
the chapel is a title deed dated in 1375, although its foundation
can be placed in the 12th century.1
According to a legend, the inhabitants decided to erect the
shrine to Our Lady for having water to cultivate the fields, and im-
mediately after the construction a new spring started to flow.
It became an important site for pilgrimage also because it
was near one of the most important mule tracks between inner
France and the Italian Riviera.2 In the second half of the 15th
century, the Count of Tende, Honoré, a member of the Lascaris,
an Italian noble family, commissioned to Giovanni Canavesio
(1430 ca-1500) the creation of a fresco cycle.3 The Piedmontese
painter with the collaboration of his compatriot Giovanni Baleison
(1463 ca-1500 ca) realized the admirable and perfectly preserved
cycle, painted on a surface of 220 m2, which induced the academic
to nickname the church as “the Sistine Chapel of the Alps”.4
An inscription added in 1583 on the wall near the entrance
indicates that the realization of the paintings ended in October
12, 1492; curiously, it was the same day as the discovery of
America by Christopher Columbus.
Manuscript received April 5, 2016; accepted May 15, 2016.
From the Division of Paleopathology, Department of Translational Research on
New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, Italy.
The authors report no conflict of interest.
Reprints: Raffaele Gaeta, MD, Department of Translational Research on New
Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, Via Roma 57, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
E-mail: gaeta-raffaele@libero.it.
Copyright © 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN: 0195-7910/16/0000–0000
DOI: 10.1097/PAF.0000000000000252
Am J Forensic Med Pathol • Volume 00, Number 00, Month 2016
The Cycle of the Passion and the Suicide of
Judas Iscariot Fresco
The lateral walls of the church are entirely covered by the cy-
cle of the Passion that depicts the last days of Jesus from the Last
Supper to the Resurrection (Fig. 2). The left wall shows the cruel-
est scenes that are the process by Pilatus, the Via Crucis, and the
Crucifixion, painted with extreme realism.5
Under a small window, between the scenes of the deposition
and the Resurrection, there is the brutal representation of the sui-
cide of Judas Iscariot, hanging from a tree, with the abdomen
quartered from which his soul, represented by a small man, is kid-
napped by a devil. The traitor is depicted with an unkempt beard
and a grotesque profile (Fig. 3).
This representation is not so frequent in the history of art,
and the best known examples come from France and North and
Central Italy; almost all illustrate the scene with bluntness as it is
in the Acts of the Apostles that narrate how Judas “…acquired a
field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he
burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.” (Acts
1:18).6 Giovanni Canavesio, however, was able to represent the
moment of the death with very detailed anatomical structures, dif-
ferently thus from other paintings of the same subject; it is there-
fore possible to assume that the artist had become familiar with
the human anatomy.
Medical Considerations
The realistic style of Canavesio along with the perfect preser-
vation of the painting allows us to describe the anatomical details
of the hanged man. First of all, the represented hanging could be
described as typical (the knot of the rope is situated over the nape
of the neck) and complete (the body is completely suspended by a
ligature with its full weight acting as a constricting force).7 The
face looks strained and contracted for perimortem spasms of the
hanging; however, the eyes seem to maintain vitality. Indeed, he
watches with horror and dismay what is happening to his body
and soul. The loop of the rope tight around the neck is very high,
and, standing at the inferior border of the jaw (thyrohyoideum lig-
ament), moves back and lifts the hyoid bone and the base of the
tongue that, pressing against the palate and pharynx, occludes
the airway. As found in forensic medicine, the tongue, clenched
between the teeth, protrudes over the dental arcades, and the face
looks pale as when there is complete closure of the carotid arter-
ies.8 The breach of the thorax follows the procedures still used
in modern pathology to perform an autopsy, ie, the costotomy
made on the cartilaginous portion of the ribs,9 although, in our
representation, there is not the removal of the entire sternocostal
articulation that is portrayed in situ. The opening of the chest and
the force of gravity acting on the body cause the spill of the tho-
racic and abdominal viscera. The heart reveals surprising details:
it is possible to note the presence of the right cardiac side that, like
during the evisceration of a corpse, partially hides the left side
from which starts a big vessel interpretable as the ascending aorta
that seems to describe a slight curve that is compatible with the
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Gaeta and Fornaciari
FIGURE 1. External view of the chapel.
trend of the aortic arch. Laterally to the heart, on the right, there is
a shiny brown organ with a convex profile partially occluded by
the rib cage. These characteristics identify it as the lower lobe of
the left lung with the shining visceral pleura, not collapsed outside
thanks to the compressive action of the heart and the ribs. Under
the cardiac apex instead are portrayed 3 pear-shaped structures
of light brown color, in part flecked with blood whose interpreta-
tion is more problematic. It is possible to assume that the painter
chose to portray the right lung (which is anatomically divided into
3 lobes: upper, median, and lower) that, leaked from the right
pleural cavity, occludes the view of the liver. Alternatively, the
painted structures might represent the parenchyma of the liver
whose partitioning in lobes is represented with poor adherence
to reality. Caudally to these structures, there is a large grey mass
interpretable as the stomach; it is greatly distended and bloated
for plausible initial putrefactive phenomena involving the forma-
tion of gases like cadaverine and putrescine produced by anaero-
bic germs (emphysematous phase of putrefaction).10
Finally, the last identifiable structure is a tubular organ coiled
into 2 spirals, well interpreted as the small intestine. The terminal
portion is lacerate, and from the lumen drips a dark green mate-
rial that represents the feces as they appear in the bowel: a semi-
fluid mass of partly digested food expelled by the stomach that
assumes a green color because of mixture with bile secreted by
the gallbladder.
FIGURE 2. The frescoes of the “Sistine Chapel of the Alps.”
2 www.amjforensicmedicine.com
Am J Forensic Med Pathol • Volume 00, Number 00, Month 2016
FIGURE 3. The suicide of Judas Iscariot.
Historical-Iconographic Considerations
The theme of the suicide of Judas has been debated by
Western art since the early Middle Ages, but only much later
spread the representation that combined the 2 different versions
of the death of the treacherous disciple: the one reported in the
Gospel of Matthew where the hanging of Judas is narrated (Mt
27:5) (“So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then
he went away and hanged himself.”),11 and the version stated in
the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:18) where the death of Judas is
illustrated, with the abdomen ripped and the consequent spill-
ing of the entrails.6 From the 13th century, the syncretic figure
of Judas who hanged himself with his belly torn open, bringing
together both canonical sources into a single narrative iconogra-
phy, supplants the one that sees the disciple simply hanging with
a rope from a tree branch. Shortly after (14th century), an ad-
ditional figurative solution spread, ie, the exit from the belly
of Judas, in addition to the stinking entrails, of the soul of the trai-
tor in anthropomorphic form, immediately gripped by a devil. The
expedient already presents, for example, in the hanged Judas of
Penne, Pescara, the work of an artist at the end of 130012 (Fig. 4)
and wants to emphasize even more the impurity and baseness of
the character whose soul does not have, as in other low medieval
representations, a way out through the mouth — the natural orifice
from which the psychological principle usually leaves the body
and rises to God — but through the most unnatural and fetid
way via by the lower bowel.13
Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and especially
Pietro Lorenzetti in the lower Basilica of Assisi,14 provide the
most illustrious precedents for the 14th century Italian painting
in the representation of the suicide of Judas: both represented
the hanging of the traitor and the fall of the bowel from the
© 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
Am J Forensic Med Pathol • Volume 00, Number 00, Month 2016 A Hanged From the Past

the preparation of the funerals of members of the elite, for pre-

serving holy bodies, and also to verify the cause of death (illness
or violent causes).18 In art, the direct study of anatomy was already
suggested and recommended in the work of Cennino Cennini
(1370–1427)19 but concerned mainly the anatomy of the naked
body and not of the viscera; for an artistic and almost scientific cu-
riosity, we have to wait in fact for the anatomical studies of
Leonardo and Michelangelo.
The medical texts dealing with human anatomy through
'400 were very schematic and basically described the knowl-
edge gained from Galenic medicine. The most popular text,
the Fünfbilderserie, usually includes a schematic representation
of the 5 anatomical systems described in the work of Galen De
Sectis ad eos qui Introducuntur, and is sometimes accompanied
by the depictions of organs such as the stomach, liver, and other
viscera, but always drawn configuring them as unrealistic and reg-
ular geometric shapes.20
In Notre-Dame-des-Fontaines therefore, unlike what is possi-
ble to notice in the late medieval and 15th century representations
of the same iconographic theme, the painter solves the scene with
a lively and grotesque realism and great knowledge of anatomy.
For these reasons, we can define it as a unicum in the history of art.

CONCLUSIONS
FIGURE 4. The Hanging Judas of Penne, Pescara. The realism of Canavesio is functional to achieve a dramatic
effect that expresses the materiality of the body of Judas. In the
abdomen torn open (Fig. 5). In particular, the realism of the style of Giovanni Canavesio was recognized a Flemish influence,
hanged man's posture, the neck bent in an unnatural way, probably which explicates in the insisted research of the realistic details,
comes from direct observation of the executions of capital punish- like in the paintings created by important masters of Northern
ment not infrequently imposed by the public authorities in low Europe (for example, Israhel Van Meckenem, Jan van Eyck, and
medieval Italy15 and is already present in the figure outlined by Petrus Christus).21 Although the artists studied anatomy from
Pietro Lorenzetti, although, in the work of Canavesio, the realism bodies, according to the ancient precepts of Cennini, we certainly
is grotesquely accentuated by the presence of the tongue taut over cannot affirm undoubtedly that Canavesio, like Leonardo or
the dental arch. Michelangelo, led a similar search. There were no universities
Canavesio refers to an iconography model consolidated in in the Western Alps and there is little probability of acquiring sim-
Italian art of the Middle Ages, also identifying the figure of Judas ilar knowledge simply from attending public dissection, practices
with a Jewish caricatured profile (long face, pointed beard, and that began at the end of the 15th century in the major cities.
hooked nose), no stranger to the 15th century Flemish models
and to the Piedmontese International Gothic patterns of Giacomo
Jaquerio16 and Pietro da Saluzzo (whose hanging Judas in the
church of San Francesco, Cuneo, albeit coarser, is contemporary
to Canavesio), but has its origin in the fully medieval era.17 In ad-
dition, as a further figurative expedient, the anthropomorphic rep-
resentation of the traitor’s soul as “little Judas in miniature”,
provided with a beard and male sexual attributes clearly outlined,
is an image that differs from what happens in other previous and
contemporary representations where the soul often assumes the
connotations of an eidolon with the features of a child.13
If the realistic style and the insistence on detail of the low vis-
cera of the body, such as the intestines, can be justified by the de-
sire to emphasize the lowness of the figure of the supreme traitor,
the peculiarity of the representation should be somehow justified
on the basis not only of the anatomical knowledge of the time
but also mainly on the basis of accessibility of the painter to this
kind of knowledge. The realistic representation of the hanged
man (twisting of the neck, eyes wide open, and outstretched
tongue between the teeth) could be derived from the direct obser-
vation of the condemned hanging on the gallows that dotted the
squares of Italian and European centers, but which ones could
have been the sources for representing the descriptive anatomy
of the thoracic and abdominal innards?
In the 15th century, the practice of opening corpses was
widespread. In fact, since the previous century, invasive proce-
dures including evisceration were implemented, for example, for FIGURE 5. The Judas of Lorenzetti, Assisi.

© 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. www.amjforensicmedicine.com 3

 Gaeta and Fornaciari
In the end, we can hypothesize that the description of the
organs and their characterization are the fruit of knowledge of
anatomy that, at the time of the painter, can be derived from the
reading of printed works or from the use of xylography, but it is
very suggestive to think that he could have been inspired by the
direct observation of the condemned in that remote borderland
between Italy and France.
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© 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.