A Gift Edit
For the Anatomist
For the teacher, the researcher, the collector of the strange and exact.
The scholar’s edit — Eustachi’s lost plates, Ruysch’s tableaux, Gamelin’s theatre of bones. For the person who knows why the rhinoceros is behind the skeleton, and will tell you.
The plates
Andreas Vesalius · 1543
The Muscle Man
The image that founded modern anatomy.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica · 1543
Andreas Vesalius · 1543
The Contemplating Skeleton
A skeleton, lost in thought before a tomb.
Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt
Juan Valverde de Amusco · 1556
The Man Who Holds His Own Skin
A figure carrying his own flayed hide.
Historia de la Composición del Cuerpo Humano · 1556
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar · 1747
The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros
An anatomy plate with a rhinoceros in the background.
Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum · 1747
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar · 1747
The Ideal Figure
Human anatomy as classical sculpture.
Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum · 1747
William Cheselden · 1733
A Skeleton, from the Osteographia
Bones drawn with the aid of the camera obscura.
Osteographia · 1733
Jacques-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty · 1746
The Anatomical Angel
A dissection that looks like a winged figure.
L’Ange Anatomique · 1746
Jacques Gamelin · 1779
The Dance of Death
Skeletons in restless, theatrical motion.
Nouveau Recueil d’Ostéologie et de Myologie · 1779
after Frederik Ruysch · early 18th c.
An Anatomical Tableau
A still life built from the body itself.
Thesaurus Anatomicus
J.-B. M. Bourgery & N. H. Jacob · 1831–1854
A Bourgery Plate
The most beautiful anatomy of the 19th century.
Traité Complet de l’Anatomie de l’Homme · 1831–1854
Paolo Mascagni · 1823–1831
The Body at Life Size
Anatomy on the grandest scale ever attempted.
Anatomia Universa · 1823–1831
Bartolomeo Eustachi · engraved 1552, published 1714
The Eustachian Plates
Anatomy two centuries ahead of its time.
Tabulae Anatomicae · 1714