Jazmina Cininas | Maddalena was a True Marvel in her Day (2011). Reduction linocut. Image: 40 x 40.5cm. Paper: 51.5 x 49cm. | Courtesy the artist and Australian Galleries, Melbourne.

Maddalena, Antonietta and Francesca Gonsalus were celebrated in sixteenth-century Europe for their extreme hirsutism, a condition inherited from their father who was captured as a child on the Canary Islands (meaning Island of Dogs – the birds get their name from the island, not the other way around) and brought to the court of Henri II. Portraits of Maddalena and her family hang in Ambras Castle, giving rise to the name Ambras Syndrome for congenital generalised hypertrichosis, commonly known as ‘Werewolf Syndrome’. When tomatoes were first brought to Europe in the 16th century, they were believed to be toxic hallucinogens, popular amongst witches wishing to undergo transformation into wolves, hence their Latin name Lycopersicon solanum or ‘Wolf Peach’.

In 2009, the sisters became the subject of the biography, The Marvelous Hairy Girls, by Merry Weisner-Hanks.