The Frontispiece, 1555

The anatomy theatre, recut for a second edition.

Work: title page for De Humani Corporis Fabrica, second edition
Maker: Andreas Vesalius (publisher’s woodcut)
Date: 1555
Held by: Published Basel, 1555 · Rijksmuseum · via Wikimedia Commons

De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem · 1555

Format

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

$29.00

The story

Twelve years after the first Fabrica, Vesalius and his printer Oporinus issued a revised edition in Basel, and the famous opening scene came with it: an anatomical theatre crowded to the cornice, a body on the table in the foreground, the anatomist at work among the onlookers. The inscription on this sheet gives the full title, naming Vesalius as physician to the Emperor Charles V. The Rijksmuseum describes it plainly as an anatomical theatre with the dissection of a human body in the foreground, and keeps it in its print room under the number RP-P-2016-1796.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

The Frontispiece, 1555, 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 Frontispiece, 1555 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of title page for De Humani Corporis Fabrica, second edition — Andreas Vesalius (publisher’s woodcut), 1555 — from the copy held by Published Basel, 1555 · Rijksmuseum · via Wikimedia Commons. 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