Nosebleed of children in painting

In 13 paintings and drawings, dating from the preclassic period in ancient Greece to the present day, representations of children with nosebleed could be detected in museums, churches, galleries and art-books. Children and adolescents were bleeding from their noses because of mechanical injury, infectious diseases, or hemorrhagic diathesis. Some artists depicted nosebleeding in a very realistic manner, others represented this symptom in a more abstract or caricaturistic way. Nosebleed stood as a symbol for human failure, as a sign of the loser, the suffering and tortured child, and as a sign of death.