Less seenβyet equally delightfulβare the wonderfully imaginative anatomically-themed initial capital letters ; the playful chapter openers ; the memento-mori themed end piece 30 ; and delicately exquisite animal skeletons which fill the book. Despiteβor perhaps because ofβthese luxurious touches, this large-scale atlas was a financial failure. This post was written by Joanna Ebenstein of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series; click here to find out more.
This book, as explained to me by Arlene Shaner βacting curator and reference librarian for historical collections, at NYAMβwas intended as a large scale, deluxe manual for artists interested in understanding human anatomy in order to create more convincing depictions of human figures. I am also very drawn images playing on biblical themes, such as a calm Saint Bartholomew being flayed alive an old staple of anatomical illustration; image 11 , and a skinned and anatomized Christ on the cross 12 which evokes this more literal rendition , cast from a convicted murderer just a few decades after this book was published.
Interestingly, Gamelin is best remembered today not for this book, but as a painter and engraver of battle scenes, genre scenes, and portraits. Another series of most wonderful and enigmatic anatomical illustrations in the New York Academy of Medicine historical library collections are to be found in De humani corporis fabrica libri decem, tabulis XCIIX aeri incisis β¦ exornati β¦ Opus posthumum and Tabulae anatomicae Venice, by Adriaan van de Spiegel β , Giulio Cesare Casserio β , and Daniel Bucretius d.
In this complex effort, van de Spiegel produced the text; Casserio commissioned the plates for his own unrealized work ; and the whole was published through the editorial offices of Bucretius, after both van de Spiegel and Casserio had died.
The emergence of anatomical illustration in the period coincided with a larger phenomenon, a new definition of personhood that was performed at court, in salons, coffeehouses, country estates, theaters, marketplaces, and at court.
