catalogue text.indd - Sanders of Oxford

59. Tab IV [Frontal view of Skeleton and Rhinoceros]
Copper engraving
Charles Grignion after Jan Wandelaar
Published by E. Cox and Son, St. Thomas Street, and No.9 Sutton Street, Southwark. 1827.
Image 380 x 540 mm, Plate 408 x 577 mm, Sheet 503 x 628 mm
unmounted
Tabs IV and VIII are perhaps the most celebrated images in the history of anatomical illustration. Contemporary accounts
testify that the backgrounds were proposed by Wandelaar, and intended to relieve the harshness of the figures
by providing the illusion of three dimensionality. For his two plates illustrating the bones and the fourth order of musculature,
Wandelaar included a rhinoceros whose bulk and latticed skin provided a pronounced contrast to the human
form. The grazing beast was known as Clara, and arrived at the port of Rotterdam in 1741 at the behest of the director
of the Dutch East India Company. Douwe Mout van der Meer subsequently paraded Clara around the Low Countries,
and the best part of mainland Europe. It is believed that Wandelaar was able to sketch her when she appeared at the
Artis zoo in Amsterdam. Until her arrival, artists and illustrators looking for an image of a rhinoceros were still slavishly
copying Dürer’s famous, but solecistic woodcut of 1515. Clara’s depiction was not only a momentous event for
zoological illustration, but would prove to be one for anatomical atlases as well.
Condition: Excellent impression with full margins. Also contains accompanying key plate.
[30019]
£300