Georgus Costentenus became a part of the PT. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie Caravan and Circus in 1875, and was by far the greatest sensation of the show’s sideshow that year and for several years to follow. Before Costentenus became a part in PT Barnum’s sideshow, he was being managed by “Signor Guillermo Farini” also known as William Hunt, who was born in 1838 from Port Hope, Ontario. Farini made himself known by being a daredevil and he was a popular one at that. His tightrope walk in 1860 over the waters of Niagara Falls was an international sensation. Later he became a sponsor who books and staged public entertainment and scouted the world for talent. It was believed that several of Farini’s discoveries later became featured in Barnum’s shows.

Costentenus was an Albanian Greek that claimed to be raised in a Turkish Harem as a boy. He had long black hair that he wore in thick braids and a well rounded fleshy body. He set out to see the world as a young man, he explored Burma and was said to have been taken captive by a band of Tartars. The leader of this fiendish pack was called “Kahn of Kashgar” he was determined that Costentenus should be put to slow agonizing death by wasp stings, a long beating, a tiger mauling or a burning at the stake. Upon further contemplation Kahn decided that Costentenus life would be spared if he agreed to let Burmese tattooists cover him with full body tattoos. Costentenus said this process took three months straight; he had a total of 337 separate tattoos. He had tattoos in his ears and one on the upper surface of his penis. The procedure was carried out while he was pinned to the ground naked; it left his flesh “a sheet of bare, quivering nerves”. Most of the tattoos were colored in both vermillion and indigo, they were all sorts of animals such as elephants, baboons, tigers, leopards and peacocks.

The Burmese practiced tattooing for more than a thousand years before Christ, and brought it to a new level by then. The tattoos were real and produced by tattooing masters of Burma but the sideshow about the Costentenus being captured by Tartars and forcibly tattooed was probably not true but it was more entertaining and exciting for his audience. In actuality he probably turned himself into a human fresco with help of the tattooers working on New York’s Bowery.

After doctors examined him to verify the authenticity of a writer Oliver Wendell Homes later declared that Costentenus to be the most perfect specimen of genuine tattooing ever seen.

Costentenus was still appearing in Barnum’s traveling show until 1879. He was still exhibiting himself professionally at least till 1882 when he was making appearances in Vienna, Austria and other places in Europe.