The 188 tiles which decorate the paneled ceiling of the Sala Magna in Muratori Cravetta’s Palace, one of the noble residences in Savigliano (Cuneo, Italy), reflect medieval style and habits.

Among noble families’ coats of arms, animals and scenes of everyday life dated about 1474–1477, we can recognize the painting of a man with enormous trilobar goiter (Fig. 1), attributed to Giovanni Antonio Molineri’s working group (1577–1631), a late mannerist painter born in Savigliano.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Tile representing a man with an enormous trilobar goiter

Full size image

The subject has coarse facial features with thick lips and broad nose which are suggestive of cretinism. Maybe he was a servant of nobility, as often these people have been employed [1]. Alternatively, he might have been painted with the purpose of creating astonishment and fear, feelings that, associated with the mystery that surrounded the origins of the goiter, had always excited the people’s imagination.

The high prevalence of goiter and cretinism in the surroundings of Cuneo and in the whole Piedmont could explain the frequent representation of these characters in the figurative art of this area.