The wounded self-portrait as an expression of the experiential dimension of disease

Abstract

The present article aims at giving an ethical-anthropological interpretation of the body wounded by the disease, under the perspective of the wounded self-portrait, a genre selected by some artists who, between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, pictured their physical or psychological malaise (Van Gogh, Kahlo, Munch, Bacon, Klee). Getting acquainted with artistic language, particularly when it arises from personal experience, has an educational value for healthcare professional, as it helps to catch “the history from below”, as Roy Porter called it, which is the history from the patient’s perspective.