Visual Thinking Strategies for medico-anatomical teaching and rheumatological diagnostics: the case of M. L. Greville Cooksey’s Maria Virgo (1915)

The paper exemplifies the use of Visual Thinking Strategies method in the biomedical area as implemented in the degree course in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Florence through the analysis of the Pre-Raphaelite painting Maria Virgo by May Louise Greville Cooksey. The team includes an art historian, a medical historian, two palaeopathologists, a rheumatologist, an endocrinologist and two anatomist, who have adopted their disciplines’ diagnostic methodologies. The nodose hands of the Virgin Mary in the painting remind the art historian of Botticelli’s and Filippino Lippi’s Madonne, models for the Pre-Raphaelites, whereas the rheumatologist conjectures that she suffers from knuckle pads.