Cazort et al. 1996

Mimi Cazort, The Theatre of the Body (11-42)

"Vesalius's practice of on-site sketching was documented on two occasions. The drawings he made have not survived, but it can be assumed that they served as guides for the artists he employed for his publications. Posted in the dissecting area and abraded by everyday use, these drawings were as subject to decay as the cadavers themselves." (18)

"Logically, the sequence of images in the atlases should reflect hte order of dissection from outside to inside, but usually the anatomists chose to diverge from this order and begin the series with the skeleton, as Leonardo decreed in the outline of his never-published treatise. The rationale for this convention, related to architectural representation, was that the description of the support structure should precede that of the facade. Vesalius maintained the sequential order only within the muscle section in Book II, but organized the seven books that comprise the Fabrica in Galenic order: bones, muscles, veins and arteris, nerves, viscera, heart, and brain. In his Epitome, there is an ingenious representational device whereby the progressive stages of dissection are shown simultaneously in one figure, through superimposition of the layers." (25)

libro di modelli, aedificium mobile (25)

liveliness of images of cadavers from 16-7c (27ff.)

mostly male figures shown (30-1)

"The traditions of both Christian and classical iconography furnished the anatomical artists with useful prototypes of poses, gestures, and even attributes. The first text to be illustrated with woodcuts, Johannes Ketham's Fasciculus medicinae of 1491, presented the figure of the gravida, the pregnant female, in the frontal hieratical pose associated with byzantine and quattrocento representations of the Madonna Enthroned -- a nice synthesis of the dignity and power of Christ's Mother with the dignity and power of the reproductive function." (36)

Adam and Eve, common in fugitive sheet anatomies (37)

"Another Christian prototype on which the anatomical artists drew was the figure of Christ crucified. A woodcut showing Christ as ecorche appears in the 1521 Commentaria by the Bolognese anatomist Berengario da Carpi. The artists has now been identified as Amico Aspertini, also from Blogna. There is no conceivable explanation of how the superimposition of and ecorche onto a standard religious image would further the communication of anatomical information, but every reason why it would be useful to an artist desiring to explore the muscular tensions of Christ's body o nthe cross. Both Raphael and Bartolomeo Passarotti drew a partly anatomized Crucifixion, and it seems a clear case of artistic necessity being the mother of anatomical iconography." (38)

rope: theatrical prop holding up cadavers, and that which killed them by hanging (39)

Monique Kornell, The Study of the Human Machine: Books of Anatomy for Artists (43-70)

first published anatomy book for artists: Jacob van der Gracht's anatomie der wtterlicke deelen van het Menschelick Lichaem . . . Bequaem voor Schilderns, Beelt-houwers, Plaet-snyders, als oock Chirurgiens ("The anatomy of the external parts of the human body ... useful for paitneres, sculptors, etchers, as well as surgeons") (see 49); use figures from Vesalius

effect of transparent layering (63)

K. B. Roberts, The Contexts of Anatomical Illustration (71-103)

ocular demonstration: important for dissections of Vesalius and rise of experimental science/philosophy

can't describe anatomy just in words; "anatomical illustration was thus not a decoration superimposed on anatomical science -- it was at the centre of the subject" (73)

casts taken of bodies beginning in 18c (see 86-7)

connects flap anatomies with sexuality:

"In the 16c the woodcut flap-anatomies were very likely produced with the lay person in mind. They appealed directly to an interest in sexual differences. At least one early example was set in a bathhouse, with a man and a woman bathing together. The "Adam and Eve" figures of the most highly developed generla flap-anatomy -- that of Remmelin in 1613 -- look back to Vesalius's 1543 publications and to his Tabulae anatomicae of 1538. In Remmelin's later additions, secondary figures (copied from Vesalius) of various internal organs, including the vagina and uterus, surround the main figure of Eve. The woman is standing with her right leg raised, her foot on a large skull. Through the skull's foramen magnum a worm-like creature disappears; its head emerges through what must be an eye-socket, and it is seen to be that of a serpent holding an apple-bearing branch. We are reminded of Eve's inquisitiveness, which led to the Fall of Man and the birth of death. Next to the skull a phoenix consumes itself in rebirth, the smoke passing up between Eve's legs. When the flap is lifted, her external genitalia are seen, and when two further folds are opened, a poorly drawn view of the labia is revealed. This sort of anatomical striptease involving the participation of the viewer is common in flap-anatomies."