Cazort et al. 1996

"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.)