Anatomy's 400th

". . . It is known vaguely, if at all, as an old volume that contains some possibly distressing illustrations of skeletons and muscles."

Thus complains the Metropolitan Museum's scholarly Curator of Prints William M. Ivins Jr., writing of one of the most nobly illustrated volumes in the world. The book is Andreas Vesalius' The Fabric of the Human Body, printed in Basel just 400 years ago. This work visualized for the first time in history the true structure of the human form and was called by the late, great Sir William Osier "the greatest medical book ever written--from which modern medicine starts." For its woodcut pictures, the volume is of similar luster to artists and connoisseurs.

The wars of the 20th Century have twice balked quatercentenary celebrations of Vesalius (born in 1514) and his book. But, war or no war, the Medical Library Association has now printed a Vesalius Number of its Bulletin. The majestic, often astounding full-page delineations of skeletons, muscles, veins and viscera found in the Fabrica* are generally attributed to Jan van Calcar, Flemish pupil of Titian. But Andreas Vesalius, to a certain extent an unscrupulous self-promoter, brought his book out with no credit to his collaborator.

Vesalius was the outstanding anatomy teacher of his time. While still in his 20s he held professorships in three Italian universities. Dissection was an art he had practiced from childhood. In his medical-school days in Paris, he had sometimes taken over demonstrations from his teachers. As a teacher himself he wanted improved diagrams to illustrate his written text. In search of an artist, he may have gone to Titian's workshop. Certainly some of the Titian-style drawings he commissioned were by Calcar.

The Body Is Found. The Fabric of the Human Body is best seen today in a magnificent reprint made in Munich (Bremer Presse) in 1934, sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine. This enormous folio (height 22 in., weight 20 lb., price $95 a copy) was made possible by the discovery in Munich in 1932 of almost all the original Calcar-attributed woodblocks. More than 200 turned up, in perfect condition. Bremer Presse craftsmen made restrikes of the blocks, on dampened rag paper, with such exquisite care that the results are far more legible than in the first great 16th Century editions. The book has yet to find a 20th Century publisher who will reprint it at a popular price; but the supposed Calcar plates were used repeatedly in anatomy books after the Renaissance, and were even re-engraved on copper to suit 17th-18th Century printing methods.

The human figures in the original plates are about 13 inches high. Low on each page, reaching approximately knee height, is a typical Italian Renaissance landscape with spires, aqueducts and ancient ruins among the rich verdure. Readers will discover that this background landscape is a connected panorama: if pasted together the figures would form a towering frieze of skeletons and variously dissected humans standing knee-deep in rolling, idyllic Italian countryside. Striking is the proud pese of many of the figures: man is drawn with his skin discarded, but holds himself in the stance of fullest dignity--sometimes as if addressing a deity on behalf of the beauty of his exposed musculature.

The Medical Library Bulletin, among its many knowing tributes to the Fabrica, does not point out that the Vesalius-Calcar plates are often stylistic forerunners of surrealism: the fantastic effects produced by some of the exposed anatomies have their counterparts in the work of several modern painters, notably Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dali.

* Latin title: De Humani Corporis Fabrica.

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