The Art of Anatomy from the 16th Century to Today

How artists and doctors made sense of the human form

The Art of Anatomy from the 16th Century to Today

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Drawing of human body with skeleton and muscles visible; the body is posed with one hand on its head

Second Level of Muscles, 1781, Antonio Cattani. Etching and engraving on five plates printed on five sheets. Getty Research Institute, 2014.PR.19

By James Cuno

Apr 27, 2022 42:37 min

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Body Content

“Berengario’s books show animated cadavers and skeletons set in a landscape, often so animated that they’re displaying their own dissecting bodies to the viewer.”

For centuries, doctors and artists have relied on renderings of the human body for their training. Until the Renaissance, anatomy studies were primarily textual, but in the late 15th and early 16th centuries illustrated anatomy books began to be published in greater numbers. Macabre prints of flayed bodies painstakingly depicted muscles, veins, and nerves, and allowed for a far better understanding of the human form. In the 19th and 20th centuries, anatomy studies were also targeted to general audiences, and moralizing flap books with Christian themes, children’s toys with removable body parts, and wax models for museum exhibitions gained popularity. The Getty Research Institute exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy explores this long history of illustrating the body.

In this episode, scholar and independent curator Monique Kornell, GRI curator of prints and drawings Naoko Takahatake, and GRI research associate Thisbe Gensler survey this history. They move from the 16th-century books by anatomist Andreas Vesalius to contemporary artworks by Robert Rauschenberg and Tavares Strachan, explaining the relevance of anatomy studies across time.

More to explore:

Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy exhibition
Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy book

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