BERTHOLDE. Engraved from an Original Picture (dwerg hofnar Bertholde, de dwerg van Normandie).

Beschrijving

Engraving portraying Bertholde, a dwarf prime minister to Alboinus, King of Lombardy (c.530-572). This plate was in ‘The London Magazine’ (c.1753), where he is described as follows: “[He had] a large head, as round as a football, adorned with red hair, very straight, and which had a great resemblance to the bristles of a hog; an extremely short forehead, furrowed with wrinkles; two little blear eyes, edged round with a border of bright carnation, and over-shadowed by a pair of large eyebrows, which upon occasion might be made use of as brushes; a flat red nose, resembling an extinguisher; a wide mouth, from which proceeded two long crooked teeth, not unlike the tusks of a boar, and pointing to a pair of ears like those which formerly belonged to Mydas; a lip of a monstrous thickness, which hung down on a chin that seemed to sink under the load of a beard, thick, straight, and bristly; a very short neck, which nature had adorned with a kind of necklace, formed of ten or twelve small wens. The rest of his body was perfectly agreeable to the grotesque appearance of his visage; so that, from head to foot he was a kind of monster, who by his deformity and the hair with which he was covered had a greater resemblance to a bear half licked into form than to a human creature. But though nature had treated him so ill with respect to his body, she had recompensed him by the subtlety, the agreeableness, and the solidity of the mind she had united to it.”Inscribed at bottom: ‘BERTHOLDE./ Engraved from an Original Picture’.