The invitation came to the family home as a knock on the door, and when the messenger from the royal court spoke, the request was not really a request at all. He asked whether the girl could be taken before Charles II of Spain, the king known to his own people as the Bewitched. She was six years old. Her name was Eugenia Martínez Vallejo, and her story had spread so far across the Spanish countryside that it had reached the ears of the king himself, who was intrigued by the prospect of this mysteriously large child.
Her parents hesitated, uncertain what awaited their daughter in Madrid, but they were in no position to refuse a summons from the crown. It is unclear whether they understood the true reason for the visit to the capital. Perhaps they hoped a physician at court might find a cure for the condition that had made their daughter an object of ridicule at home. If so, they were mistaken.
In 1680, at just six years old, Eugenia was taken to the royal court with her parents. The royal tailor was quick to dress her as tradition required before she could be presented to the king. Charles II was fascinated by her appearance and soon suggested to her parents that she be taken into his care and become part of the royal court. They accepted.
A chronicler of the period, Juan Cabezas, published a pamphlet announcing her arrival in Madrid. He wrote that “the wonders of nature have arrived at this court in the form of a giant girl named Eugenia Martínez. ” He then added that His Majesty Charles II, realizing that she was a miracle of nature, decided to see her and asked that she be brought to his royal palace in Madrid, “where today she is admired by the royal household and all the nobility of these kingdoms. ”
At first glance, the king’s invitation seemed an act of generosity.
In truth, there was another reason. Since medieval times, it had been a popular tradition in European courts to keep all sorts of entertaining characters close at hand, and Spain was no exception. These figures were called gente de placer, people of pleasure. Charles II was generous with Eugenia and promptly included her in this group, which was made up of jesters, dwarfs, people with deformities, and even the insane.
The king and his courtiers liked to keep such people around to amuse themselves, and the king especially enjoyed their company, albeit in order to ridicule them. Charles did not delay in exhibiting Eugenia at parties held in the palace. There she was sought out by many ladies of the court who wanted to be drawn or painted beside her, because standing next to the enormous child emphasized the beauty of their own slender figures. Sad to say, Eugenia and the others like her at court received no payment for their services despite working long hours.
They lived at the mercy of their lords, who could throw them out penniless whenever they saw fit. Some saw this as a grave misfortune, for they lived simply to be mocked as human exhibits. Yet for others, the arrangement may have been a kind of stroke of luck. The nobility spent a great deal of money on the gente de placer, ensuring they were well fed, kept warm through cold winter nights, and given a varied and interesting wardrobe, which was more than could be said for most peasants of the day.
None of this changed the fact that the nobility treated these people as objects and did with them whatever pleased them. Charles’s own father, Philip IV of Spain, was recorded to have kept around 110 court dwarfs, not only for his own amusement but because much of the nobility kept dwarves to reinforce the idea of the perfection and superiority of the ruling dynasty. What set Eugenia apart from the others at court was that the king commissioned two renowned portraits of her. They were painted by the artist Juan Carreño de Miranda, who had been appointed court painter to the queen in 1671.
Today both paintings hang side by side at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. In the portraits, Eugenia appears sad and uncomfortable, and she was presumably in considerable pain, as her weight would have made it difficult to hold a pose for any length of time. The paintings themselves are named La Monstrua Vestida and La Monstrua Desnuda, the monster clothed and the monster undressed. That naming reflected how she was regarded at court, exhibited as a curiosity, a freak, because of her size.
The cruelty of her treatment can be seen in the way Juan Cabezas described her appearance in his pamphlet. He wrote that Eugenia was pale and not too unpleasant to look at, although her face was overly large. “The head, face, neck, and other features of hers are the size of two men’s heads,” he recorded. “Her stomach is as huge as the fattest pregnant woman about to give birth.
Her thighs are so thick and full of flesh that one becomes confused and astonished by her unsightly nature. Her legs are just a tad smaller than those of a man and full of flesh. Her feet are proportionate to her body, though they are like those of a man. However, she has trouble getting around due to the excessive size of her body.
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It was a brutal description, and one that made plain what life at court held for her. Yet to understand how she came to be there at all, it is necessary to go back to her beginnings. Eugenia Martínez Vallejo was born in 1674 in a remote settlement in Merindad de Montija, in the north of Spain. Her father was José Martínez Vallejo, and her mother was Antonia de la Bodega.
The exact occupations of her parents are unknown, but it has been reported that they came from a humble background. It is known that Eugenia had siblings, though how many is uncertain. Before her birth, it was reported that her mother’s waters broke one Sunday morning while she was in church. Because of this, Antonia had no time to get home and ended up giving birth in the church itself.
This was not a common occurrence, and those present took the circumstances of the birth as a good omen for the baby girl’s future. The Spanish writer María Jesús has suggested this could be the reason for her name. Eugenia, in Spanish, means la bien nacida, the well-born. As a baby, Eugenia was described as healthy, strong, and with a very good appetite, all of which seemed to indicate she would grow into an adult of good health, something that was not always a guarantee at the time.
In the seventeenth century, especially in rural areas, because of the lack of doctors, infant mortality rates were very high. In England at this time, for example, twelve percent of all children born died in their first year, and thirty-six percent died before the age of six. Eugenia was described as plump as a baby, yet her parents did not think too much of it initially. The medical and social standards of the time favored girls who were slightly more robust, as it was seen as a sign of fertility and, in some cases, wealth.
Her parents likely believed it was not something to worry about. As she grew older, things became more troubling. Little Eugenia began to grow very fast in comparison to other infants. It was said that she looked like she was twelve years old even before her first birthday, although this was more than likely an exaggeration.
By the time she was one, she already weighed around twenty kilos, and as time passed she kept growing at an alarming rate. Her siblings grew normally, like most other children. Because of this, her parents sought out a physician to help with their daughter’s weight problems. Eugenia was put on a strict diet, but even this was not enough to remedy the situation.
As time went by she grew larger, and because of this she was repeatedly made fun of by her neighbors. Due to the treatment she received, her parents tried to hide her from the local residents by keeping her inside the house, so she would not have to endure the harassment she constantly faced in the outside world. Word of the giant girl spread quickly to nearby towns and villages, and strangers would frequently approach the house to catch a glimpse of her and mock her appearance. By the time she was six, it was said she weighed around sixty-five kilos.
As a result of the constant bullying, she spent most of her time confined to her room where nobody could see her. Then came the messenger from the king. Once she arrived at the palace, life changed for her, though not necessarily in the way her parents might have hoped. At court, Eugenia was frequently mocked as she walked from place to place, because she tired easily and struggled to keep up with others.
It is also believed she had hormonal problems and was infertile, never having her period even in later life. At the time, no one knew what afflicted her. Nowadays, it is speculated that she likely suffered from a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome, caused by a loss of function of specific genes on chromosome 15. Children with this syndrome are constantly hungry, which can lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Often, affected individuals have a narrow forehead, small hands and feet, short height, light skin and hair, and are unable to have children. Many of these symptoms are very similar to the reports of Eugenia from the time, though it cannot be said with certainty that this was the cause of her appearance. Despite the mockery, despite her poor health, and despite being treated as a human exhibit, it is believed that she enjoyed living at the palace. Eugenia was a pleasant girl and actually became quite popular at court, even appreciated by the royal family.
Even as she entered her teenage years and adulthood, she was said to have remained well liked. Eugenia Martínez Vallejo died in 1699 at the age of twenty-four. She had lived her whole life in the palace after being taken in when she was six. The location of her remains and the exact cause of her death are unknown, though it was likely connected to the condition she suffered from for her entire life.
Hundreds of years later, in 1997, the city of Avilés in Spain commissioned a statue of Eugenia Martínez, made in honor of the artist of her portrait, Carreño de Miranda. The statue depicts his most famous painting, La Monstrua Vestida, and was made out of bronze by the Spanish sculptor Amado González Hevia. It stands on the street named after the painter, in the Barrio Marinero de Sabugo.
The girl who had been hidden away from her neighbors as a child, exhibited to the nobles of Spain as a monster, and remembered by history in the titles of two paintings now stands in bronze on a public street, still dressed in the clothes Carreño de Miranda gave her.
