The Écorché from Behind

Vesalius retold for painters and sculptors.

Work: from Abrégé d’Anatomie, accommodé aux Arts de Peinture et de Sculpture
Maker: François Tortebat
Date: 1667
Held by: Published Paris, 1667 · Wellcome Collection

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

François Tortebat, a painter, published his short anatomy in Paris in 1667 for artists rather than physicians: an abridgement arranged, as its title says, for painting and sculpture. Its figures come from the Fabrica of 1543, and this one keeps Vesalius's composition, a flayed man seen from the back with one arm hanging open, walking away across country with a town on the hill behind him. For a studio, it answered the question every figure painter asks: what lies under the skin of a turning back. From the Wellcome Collection's copy.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

The Écorché from Behind, 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 Écorché from Behind framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of from Abrégé d’Anatomie, accommodé aux Arts de Peinture et de Sculpture — François Tortebat, 1667 — from the copy held by Published Paris, 1667 · 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