Tattoo History - Prince Constantin
Prince Constantin
The american tattoo miracle was born in 1827. In 1873 George Constantin, also known as Prince Constantin, Captain Georgi, Captain Constantenus, Prince C., The Turk or The Living Picture Gallery, was not only the acmatic at Phineas T. Barnum's America Museum, the biggest circus in the world, but also the most famous, most beautiful an most mysterious tattooed person of the 19th century.
His 338 symmetrical ordered and meshed tattoos covered his whole body and showed crowned sphinxes, dragons, snakes, monkeys, elephants, leopards, tigers, lions, panthers, gazelles, cats, crocodiles, lizards, eagles, storks, swans, peacocks, owls, fishes, salamanders, and also men and women, fruits, leaves as well as flowers. The motives were spread over his body as follows: fifty images on the chest, fifty one on the left arm, fifty on the right arm, thirty seven on the back, eight in the neck, fifty two on the hips and the waist, one on the penis, hundred and thirty seven on the legs and two on the forehead.
All through his life Prince Constantin could never really make up his mind about the history of origins of his many tattoos. It sounded like the adventurous combination of the stories Jean Baptiste Cabri and John Rutherford told everybody who would like to hear them. One time he told that he had married a princess of a native tribe in the south seas, got captured and had to go through horrible tortures and tatauing rituals until he fled through Asia and Africa to Europe of course not not without having the one or other adventure. He made a statement about himself saying he is "the greatest scoundrel and thief in the world and constantly surrounded by beautiful women".
Another time he told that he had helped the French in the war against China where he was captured by the Chinese. They put him in jail where they tattooed him every day for three hours in a painful procedure over a time frame of three months. Only four strong men holding him down and threatening his life made him do it. It was never revealed what the truth really was.
In the 70's of the 19th century Prince Constantine not only drew attention from onlooking gazers but also from scientists and doctors. He was introduced on medical and science conventions, his tattoos were studied and a interdisciplinary disquisition was written about him. The scientists were sure the origins of his tattoos were burmese, that's why Constantin is also known as the "Tattooed from Burma".
Constantine was a role model for all future "freaks" who displayed their skin in sideshows and the circus.
Know your history better than we do? Then let us know and e-mail us any additions you might have. If you know about an important event or a person influencing tattoo history that we missed out on... we wanna know about it too!
