Surgically repaired cleft lips depicted in paintings of the late Gothic period and the Renaissance

Paintings and drawings by Lucas Moser, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, and Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen suggest that they employed people who had had cleft lips operated on as models for their works of art. Created between 1431 and 1520, the portraits show diagnostic facial profiles with a curved nasal dorsum, short columella, maxillary retrusion, and pseudoprogenia. The first medical illustration of cleft lip surgery was published in 1564 by Ambroise Paré. It was therefore late Gothic and Renaissance artists who depicted the conspicuous signs of surgically treated patients with cleft lip more than 130 years before the surgeons.