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The true and lively Pourtraicture of Valentine Greatrakes Esq…Anonymous, 1794, Publisher W. Richardson. Subject: Faith Healing, Valentine Greatrakes (1628-83).
The Healing Arts: The true and lively Pourtraicture of Valentine Greatrakes Esq…
That creeps me out. He’s handling the kid like it’s food. Or did I just reveal a subconscious quirk of my own?
I don’t get any sense of food handling. Greatrakes was an interesting person, who seemed to truly believe he had a gift for healing. I think it’s likely he had a compulsion to touch people, and this is how he went about it. According to the wiki on him, there was never any blemish on his character from any person.
He did go back to Ireland, gave up the faith healing and resumed farming in 1668 on £1,000 a year, which interested me greatly, because that was a fucktonne of money for the time, he was seriously wealthy, but there’s no indication where that income came from at all.
I’m also fascinated with “Pourtraicture”. I wonder if the anonymous artist came up with that…nope, it was a thing. Eikon basilike : the pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in his solitudes and sufferings .. and “Pourtraicture ingenieuse de plusieurs façons de masques, forts utile aulx painctres, orseures, taillieurs de pierres, voirriers, & tailleurs d’images”
Weird.
I put “Pourtraicture” into googletranslate in Detect Language mode to translate to Japanese.
It resulted in 食べ物 (tabemono), which means “food”.
Hahahahahaha, okay, that’s right weird.