A Gift Edit
For the Surgeon
The operating hand, drawn by masters — for the consulting room or the study.
Anatomy as the surgeon meets it: Valverde’s écorché with his knife, Bourgery’s surgical plates drawn from life, Albinus’s figures of impossible exactness. Works for the wall of someone who opens the body for a living.
The plates
Andreas Vesalius · 1543
The Muscle Man
The image that founded modern anatomy.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica · 1543
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-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty · 1748
Anatomy of the Head
The dissected head, in luminous colour.
Anatomie de la Tête · 1748
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