Tag: Vesalius
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Redefining the medical artist
Meena Malhotra Chicago, Illinois, USA Medical illustration is a long-standing tradition that dates back to the sixteenth-century anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius. In his preface to his book, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), Vesalius commented on the value of images and dissection in learning anatomy: How much pictures…
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Andreas Vesalius: Wesel to Basel
Wyn BeasleyWellington, New Zealand The Witing family—or Witjing or Witincx; spelling was capricious in those days—originated in Wesel, at the junction of the Rhine and Lippe rivers, and its members were court physicians. Peter is supposed to have attended the Emperor Frederik III, who reigned 1440-1493, and he translated a treatise of Avicenna, which became…
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Vesalius: Spirit of excellence and inquiry
JMS Pearce United Kingdom This brief sketch is offered to commemorate the 500th birthday of Andreas Vesalius and the beginnings of post-Renaissance anatomy. Few men are more deserving of lasting fame than Vesalius. The prime importance of his anatomy is irrefutable. The current decline in anatomy teaching has provoked trenchant criticism.1 But Vesalius was not the…
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Vesalius: The true face of anatomy
Donatella LippiFlorence, ItalyLuigi PadelettiFlorence, Italy The only unquestionably life-portrait of Vesalius’ is the wood-cut which finds its place in the frontispieces of both editions of the Fabrica1 in German and Latin editions of the Epitome,2 as well as in the 1546 Letter on the China Root.3 This portrait was done by Jan Stephan van Calcar…
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Andreas Vesalius’ audience speaks out
Angela BelliQueens, New York, United States Andreas Vesalius’ The Fabric of the Human Body marks not only a milestone in medical history but, by virtue of its extraordinary illustrations, offers ample evidence of medicine and art complementing each other. The frontispiece of the work, depicting an audience witnessing a dissection performed by Vesalius, portrays a…
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Surgeon’s hands in Vesalius’s portraits and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp
Adéla Janíčková Prague, Czech Republic Fig 1: Anon, Frontispiece, 1543. From Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, 1543 “To extol the human hand as a monument to God’s wisdom, an instrument that permits humans to create civilization” This statement by Dolores Mitchell1 describes the human hand as both a monument to divinity and an…