Eighteenth Century

Physicians during the eighteenth century continued to depend upon artists for their training in anatomy (while the debate of whether these representations were art or medicine raged).

Tabulae anatomicae Bartolomaei Eustachi quas a tenebris tandem vindicates (1714) by Bartolomaeo Eustachi

Bartolomaeo Eustachi (1513?-1574) was an Italian professor of anatomy, a position that allowed him to obtain cadavers for dissection from nearby hospitals. His anatomic works were precise, and in many cases more anatomically correct than those of his contemporary, Andreas Vesalius, though not as artistically advanced. Upon Eustachi’s death in 1574, his unpublished thirty-nine plates subsequently found their way into the Vatican Library, where they remained lost for over one hundred fifty years. In the early part of the eighteenth century, the physician to Pope Clement XI located the missing plates, completed the text with his own narrative, and released all forty-seven studies in 1714. Had the illustrations been published at the time of their initial execution, Eustachi almost certainly would have been recognized with Vesalius as one of the founders of modern anatomy. This is a representation of the reno-vascular system.

Tabulae anatomicae (1741) by Pietro da Cortona

Pierto da Cortona (1596-1669) was one of the most important painters of the Renaissance Italian Baroque period, and his large ceiling frescoes influenced European art for many years after his death. Cortona’s figures were also anxious to demonstrate their muscles more as an art form than as a guide to physicians. This is a demonstration of the muscular system

Tabulae anatomicae (1741) by Pietro da Cortona

another representation of the muscular system

Osteographia (1733) by William Cheselden

Probably the finest illustrations of the musculoskeletal system produced in the eighteenth century were by William Cheselden and by Siegfried Albinus. This is a representation of the skeletal anatomy

"praying skeleton" by William Cheselden ((1688-1752), (ca. 1730)

another illustration by Cheselten

Tabulae Sceleti e Musculorum Corporis Humani (1747) by Bernhardus Siegfried Albinus

the muscle man

The Reward of Cruelty (1751) by William Hogarth

In his etching of the dissection of Tom Nero, William Hogarth illustrated the criminal source of a great deal of anatomic material. Note that the hangman’s noose remained tied around the neck of the subject being dissected while his entrails were being fed to a dog, a certain sign of disrespect.

Anatomie des parties de la génération de l'homme et de la femme (1773) by Jacques Fabien Gautier D'Agoty

Jacques Fabien Gautier D’Agoty (1717-1786) gave us perhaps the most magnificent art in the history of medicine. He was the assistant to Jacob Christian Le Blon, inventor of printing in color, and D’Agoty adapted those techniques to his medical illustration by using a four-color process. He continued the tradition of medical anatomy as an art form in his color mezzotints. This is the muscular anatomy.