A fish-like boy seen in Naples ("Bernardino Configilo"). Woodcut, ca. 1685.

His skin is covered with scales. He sits by the sea shore, beside him is a tortoise, and in the sea beyond are ships and a large fish. The lettering names the child as Bernardin, the son of Pierre-Antoine Configilo and his wife Elizabeth Nastasia, from Bisceglie in Apulia, and says that his fish-lke appearance was due to his mother observing and thinking about fish in a river while she was taking her washing to the river: the theory of maternal impression. Some names in the text seem to be garbled (Configilo, Satorelle, Tritod), either accidentally or as a parody of showmen exhibiting monstrous births to the credulous