Israel Medical Association Journal

La Bella Simonetta was one of the nicknames for a young Florentine woman named Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who became a symbol of female beauty. She was praised not only for her physical beauty but also to her intelligence and education. She admired the Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano, and the outstanding poets and artists close to them. These Renaissance intellectuals wanted to create a painting of ideal female beauty against the backdrop of poverty of Florentine women, many of whom were slaves or subsisted on prostitution [1]. One of the ideas was the portraits of Simonetta, painted by Sandro Botticelli. Names of the artist, portrait models, and the canvases refer to the period of the Italian Renaissance of art and poetry and great geographical discovery.

The portraits of mothers of artists are a distinct genre of female portrait art. Whereas most female portraits were commissioned, the mother portraits were the painter's initiative and reflection of sentiments. In several portraits of the mothers of artists, in particular Rembrandt’s paintings, age-related changes are depicted by the masters and their contemporaries. To some extent, they explain the feelings of James Abbott McNeil Whistler, expressed by the color pattern of the title of his mother portrait, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.

Objectives: To evaluate the incidence and comparative frequency of clinical manifestations in different etiologic-pathogenic variants of RTD[1] in Israel and in summarized published data.

Methods: Stillborn and neonatal autopsy material from nine medical centers in northern and central Israel was studied. Information concerning pregnancy, labor and postnatal status and autopsy findings of cases with histologically, histochemically and immunohistochemically confirmed RTD were obtained from corresponding reports and from published material.

Results: From the 1538 autopsies of fetuses (≥ 20 weeks gestation) and neonates that were performed between 1976 and 2007 we identified 12 cases of RTD (0.78%). Abnormality occurred more often (1.4%) in the Upper and Western Galilee than in Israel as a whole.

Conclusions: Our study and a review of the literature showed that the autosomal recessive variant of RTD was more frequent than twin-twin transfusion induced. Most symptoms were similar in all variants of RTD, but their frequency was different in each of them.