A Bourgery Plate

The most beautiful anatomy of the 19th century.

Work: from Traité Complet de l’Anatomie de l’Homme
Maker: J.-B. M. Bourgery & N. H. Jacob
Date: 1831–1854
Held by: Published Paris, 1831–54 · Wellcome Collection

Traité Complet de l’Anatomie de l’Homme · 1831–1854

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

Bourgery's eight-volume *Complete Treatise* — illustrated by Nicolas Henri Jacob over more than twenty years — is the great masterpiece of 19th-century anatomical art: hundreds of hand-coloured lithographs of surpassing clarity and grace. Jacob had trained under David, and brought a history painter's eye to the operating table; the surgical volumes show procedures drawn from life with a composure that still steadies a reader. The moment when scientific precision and sheer beauty reached their height together.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

A Bourgery Plate, 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.

About this reproduction

A reproduction of from Traité Complet de l’Anatomie de l’Homme — J.-B. M. Bourgery & N. H. Jacob, 1831–1854 — from the copy held by Published Paris, 1831–54 · 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 collection