The Art of Anatomy by Sarah Simblet (History)

"The body has always been a core subject for the artist, be it to honour God, or to question and doubt the very nature of humanity itself"

"Claudius Galen (AD 129-201) is the most dominant figure in early European anatomy. He was the medical officer to Gladiators in the Roman Empire, and later physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius... In the middle ages, translations and derivations of Galens works were read from a pulpit, while below, a barber cut open a body, and a demonstrator pointed with a stick to the salient parts."

"Leonardo da Vinci's place in the history of art and anatomy is unique. The detailed observations  and speculations that fill his notebooks are both inspirational and startlingly original. His studies were driven by intense curiosity... His knowledge of mechanics, architecture, and engineering guided his understanding inside the body. Leonardo saw structures taht demonstrated how the body should work, and although not wholly acurate, he invented  a new attitude and mind frame that carried the subject forwars to greater heights... The level of detail in his work asks for gretaer insight, the level of imagination demands that we see the physical structure of the human body in relation to other things in the world...However, da Vinci contributed nothing to the development of science, and was overtaken by Vesalius becuase he did not publish his work. After his death his notebooks passed through generations of private hands, remaining largely unknown for 300 years. They were not published in a facsimile edition until the late 19th century. In spite of this they are still regarded as the finest anatomical drawings ever made, and when they finally came to view they had  agreat impact on the representation of the body in 19th and 20th century medicine".

"In 1540 Thomas Vicary, surgeon to Henry VII of England, persuaded him to unite the London Guilds of Barbers and Surgeons. He was elected there first master, and int he same year they were granted Four hanged criminals (per year) for dissection".

"Methods of anatomical preperation were significantly developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. Donation is now sufficiently popular for all departments to be highly selective in their choice of suitable subjects".

In 1747 the University of Leiden published "Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum Corporis Humani" which is a human atlas, that unified the work of artist Jan Wandelaar and eminent scholar and anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albinus whose friendship and collaberation lasted more than 30 years.

Albinus began with the skeleton and built the body from it's architecture of the bone. He would soak the ligaments of a prepared skeleton in vinegar to preserve them, he would suspend the body with a frame of a delicately adjusted ropes that filled the room, and he would then freeze them.

Meret Oppenhiem's X-Ray of a skeleton, 1964, is a witty and elegant self-portrait in the European vanitas tradition where the presence of the life and death share the same moment, the same stage, without anxiety or morbidity