Get the latest tech news

Gottfried Mind, the Raphael of Cats

Labelled a “cretin” and “imbecile” in his lifetime, the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind had profound talents when it came to drafting the feline form. Kirsten Tambling reconstructs the biography of this elusive figure, whose savant-like qualities inspired later French Realists, early psychiatric theorists, and Romantic visions of the artist as outsider.

By the first decades of the nineteenth century, these drawings, prints, and watercolours had brought Mind a limited pan-European celebrity, his distinct talents later encapsulated in the moniker mentioned in every obituary and retrospective account that appeared in the English-speaking press, from the Gentleman’s Magazine to the children’s periodical Chatterbox: “Der Katzenraphael”, or, “The Raphael of Cats”. Though Gottfried Mind is seldom discussed today, his story unites several concerns that preoccupied Europe in the early nineteenth century: the swiftly evolving nature of art and of artists; the increasingly examined relationship between humans and animals; and, more distinctively, a popular and intellectual fascination with the Swiss Alps and the supposed Alpine phenomenon of “cretin imbecility”. twisting their bodies in various ways, with their mouths agape”, he wrote, “they provoke passersby to laughter and astonishment.” Platter is thought to be referring to something analogous to what is now termed CIDS (congenital iodine deficiency syndrome), a condition marked by impaired physical and mental development, and often a swelling (or “goitre”) around the thyroid gland.

Get the Android app