Stadelmann, Pietro | A scarce record of an armless dulcimer player

Stadelmann, Pietro

Mirabilis Deus In Operibus Suis ... [Italy: ca. 1620]

Broadside (388 x 244 mm). Printed in Italian in two columns within a typographic border, woodcut of Stadelmann manipulating the dulcimer with his toes; not examined out of frame, light browning, laid down on paper, borders trimmed close, a few pinpoint losses. Framed and glazed with Plexiglas. 

Pietro Stadelmann was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1598 without hands or arms. As the present broadside attests, he "nonetheless attended to all his needs with his feet, as you see here below, in the most stupefying manner." Enumerated amongst his talents are the playing of instruments (the dulcimer is evocatively pictured in a woodcut), throwing of knives, and more prosaically, eating, drinking, writing, and sewing. 

Stadelmann was born at a time when the early modern conception of the "monstrous" (or anomalous) was shifting towards a slightly more tolerant view, no longer seen as a portent of doom, they were increasingly viewed with a weary detachment. Anomalous persons often defined themselves in further contrast to these views, as seen in the headline here, which frames Stadelmann's story under the headline: "Admirable God in his own Work." 

We can cite only one other copy of this broadside at auction in the last 40 years

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 237; EE, pp. 20-21