A Body of Evidence: An Art Historical perspective on Eighteenth and ...

using careful measurements <strong>of</strong> many examples. Many such later texts took
Vesalius’ Fabrica as the exemplar for the conventions <strong>of</strong> anatomical illustration.
Figures were placed in elaborate landscapes and the arrangement <strong>of</strong> sections
within each text was closely based on Vesalius.
In Vesalius’ Fabrica the skeleton in the second plate leans against a memorial
with the Latin text, ‘Man lives through his genius, all the rest is mortal’, 71 while
considering a skull in a melancholic scene <strong>of</strong> memento mori (Fig.14). The
background is barren rock and earth, while the light raking from in front <strong>of</strong> the
figure gives it a three-dimensional appearance and situates it within the
landscape. In Godfried Bidloo’s <strong>An</strong>atomica humani corporis, Amstelodami (1685),
Gerard de Lairesse uses familiar devices employed by illustrators such as
<strong>perspective</strong>, shading and background. He extends the metaphor <strong>of</strong> the skeleton
being the framework <strong>of</strong> the body by the use <strong>of</strong> architectural references in the
background. In the Skeleton with the hour glass (Fig. 15) the skeleton is surrounded
by carefully chosen symbols. Many <strong>of</strong> these symbols, such as the open
sarcophagus with the draped shroud and the hourglass running out in the hand
<strong>of</strong> the skeleton, allude to the association, current in the seventeenth century, <strong>of</strong>
the study <strong>of</strong> anatomy with death and mortality. The large architectural arch and
the lid <strong>of</strong> the sarcophagus separate the skeleton from the trees, houses and
mountains beyond, to suggest the ultimate separation <strong>of</strong> death. Similarly in
71 This quote was taken from Virgil’s elegies on Maecenas. Hildebrand, 2004, p. 299.