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

Chapter One – The Emergence <strong>of</strong> <strong>An</strong>atomy.
Prior to the Renaissance the most widely recognised text on anatomy was the
work <strong>of</strong> Claudius Galen (c. 130- 200 AD) entitled On the use <strong>of</strong> the parts <strong>of</strong> the
human body, which investigated human anatomy through studies carried out on
animals. 6 It is not known whether Galen’s text, which was transcribed from the
original Greek first into Syriac and Arabic, and in the Renaissance into Latin, was
originally illustrated. 7 Thirteenth-century anatomical illustration in European
manuscripts were typically limited to representational diagrams that showed the
body as a froglike form with arms and legs splayed, as can be seen in the
example <strong>of</strong> medieval anatomical illustration in Fig. 4. Such illustration merely
located the position <strong>of</strong> the organs rather than explaining their functions.
During the Renaissance, anatomy was studied in a number <strong>of</strong> disciplines. In the
fifteenth century artists and scholars explored the theories <strong>of</strong> Greek
philosophers such as Empedocles and Plato, who had argued that the human
body was a microcosm, or lesser world, which replicated the macrocosm <strong>of</strong> the
universe. 8 Scholars studied the nature <strong>of</strong> the world to find patterns that were
repeated in science, music, architecture and art. 9 . The underlying principles <strong>of</strong>
6 Galen was a Greek physician from Pergamon who practiced medicine and wrote about anatomy. He later
moved via Alexandria to Rome where he became the physician for the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and
Commodus. Under Roman rule dissection <strong>of</strong> cadavers was forbidden therefore many <strong>of</strong> his observations
were based on animals close to humans such as Barbary apes. Cunningham, 1997, p. 27.
7 Choulant, 1945, p. 21a.
8 For a detailed account <strong>of</strong> the history <strong>of</strong> these ideas see Barkan, 1975, pp. 8-60.
9 Kemp, 1981, p. 104.