The Anatomy Theatre
The linework — every burin stroke holds at full size

The Ideal Figure

The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros

An anatomy plate with a rhinoceros in the background.

Work
from Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum
Maker
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar
Date
1747
Held by
Published Leiden, 1747 · Wellcome Collection
Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum · 1747

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Albinus wanted the most perfect anatomical figures ever drawn — and his engraver Wandelaar set them against strange, beautiful backgrounds, most famously Clara, a young Indian rhinoceros then the toast of Europe, grazing behind a human skeleton. "On account of the rarity of the beast," Albinus wrote, its form pleased him more than mere ornament. The pairing is absurd and it is magnificent: the most rigorous osteology of its century, standing in a landscape with a celebrity animal. The last great anatomy to dream.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros, printed large and framed — in the consulting room, the study, the library. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros framed on the wall
The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros framed on the wall
The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros framed on the wall
The Skeleton and the Rhinoceros framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A reproduction of from Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum — Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar, 1747 — from the copy held by Published Leiden, 1747 · Wellcome Collection. The source. The work is centuries out of copyright and in the public domain.
  • Printed faithful to that source scan. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the plate you receive is the plate as it survives.
  • Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed editions sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount.
  • Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the engraver’s, not ours.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days.
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the engraver’s hand is visible — the linework, the tonal work, the lettering — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same hand

The Ideal Figure — from Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar, 1747

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, engr. Jan Wandelaar · 1747

The Ideal Figure

Human anatomy as classical sculpture.

Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum · 1747
A Skeleton, from the Osteographia — from Osteographia, or the Anatomy of the Bones, William Cheselden, 1733

William Cheselden · 1733

A Skeleton, from the Osteographia

Bones drawn with the aid of the camera obscura.

Osteographia · 1733