A Fugitive Sheet: the Skeleton

A flap-sheet with Vesalius’s face.

Work: anatomical fugitive sheet
Maker: Unknown maker
Date: 16th century
Held by: Wellcome Collection

Skeleton, seu compages ossium humani corporis

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

Fugitive sheets were the cheapest anatomy of the sixteenth century: single printed pages, sold loose, sometimes with paper flaps to lift. This one carries a skeleton leaning on a spade with a skull in its hand, ringed by smaller figures of bones, the text in Latin with some names in Greek. The Wellcome Collection's catalogue notes that the main figure has the features of Vesalius. Most such sheets were used until they fell apart, which is why the survivors are prized. Hand coloured, and printed in a column beside the woodcut.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

A Fugitive Sheet: the Skeleton, 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.

A Fugitive Sheet: the Skeleton framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of anatomical fugitive sheet — Unknown maker, 16th century — from the copy held by 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