Overview
- An international team published a paper in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism arguing that tumour apoplexy — sudden bleeding or swelling of a pituitary adenoma — was the probable cause of Simonetta Vespucci’s death at 23.
- The authors rely on contemporaneous letters that describe a collapse at a ball followed by headaches, vomiting, hallucinations and fever, which they say match the rapid onset of tumour apoplexy.
- Researchers used a pre‑trained deep‑learning facial recognition model on five portraits attributed to Simonetta and report visual signs consistent with a prolactin‑secreting pituitary adenoma, including apparent lactation and an eye misalignment.
- The paper advances possible triggers for the apoplexy — vigorous dancing or a reported assault by Alfonso II — but both remain circumstantial and the study and commentators note limits of diagnosing historical figures from art and partial archives.
- The finding rewrites a long‑standing attribution of her death to tuberculosis, links medical reasoning to art history, and the authors say further work is needed on eye misalignment and on refining how AI and documents can support retrospective medical claims.