LIFE IS A SHORT TRIP

This post continues with my discussion on prodigies, aspies and savants.
Until the mid-twentieth century, they were thought to have a much shorter lifespan than normal people, because their minds developed more quickly.
Renaissance and Baroque poets hated prodigies, comparing them to brittle and early-blooming cherry blossoms.
Maybe Queen Christina of Sweden and the young Napoleon suffered from an unstable state of health, but the "early-blooming" prejudice could be debunked from their cases, since both lived about five or six decades: the average life span of a person in those days.
On the other hand, a person combining the beauty and health of youth with a sharp mind and vast knowledge was and is an ideal often attained by role models: this combination was exalted in important people, whether Catholic saints, Protestant faith heroes (such as both Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter Christina), or secular revolutionary leaders (Napoleon Bonaparte).
To quote Kortekaas, this occurrence is "a much-loved commonplace, both in religious and secular literature". Ernst Robert Curtius christened this occurrence puer/puella senex ("elderly boy/girl"). In the olden days, aristocratic and royal children were dressed as adults and given a thorough education, and thus, the commonplace has also been described visually.