The Frontispiece, 1725

Vesalius’s lesson, engraved for the Enlightenment.

Work: title page for Opera Omnia Anatomica et Chirurgica
Maker: after Andreas Vesalius
Date: 1725
Held by: Published Leiden, 1725 · Rijksmuseum · via Wikimedia Commons

Opera Omnia Anatomica & Chirurgica · 1725

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

When Leiden gathered Vesalius's complete anatomical and surgical works in 1725, the publishers did not commission a new opening. They had the 1543 scene engraved again on copper, finer in line and deeper in shadow: the crowded hall, the open body, the skeleton overhead. A collector's note in brown ink on the back of this sheet records that it cost four stuivers, and repeats the story the eighteenth century believed, that the original woodcut was of Titian's invention. The Rijksmuseum holds the sheet as the title page for the Opera Omnia of 1725.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

The Frontispiece, 1725, 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, 1725 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of title page for Opera Omnia Anatomica et Chirurgica — after Andreas Vesalius, 1725 — from the copy held by Published Leiden, 1725 · 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