Alan test

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The Fabrica of Vesalius A Semiotic Analysis Alan Young

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Introduction Sir William Osler called Vesalius’s 1543 publication of the De Humani Corporis Fabrica “the greatest medical book ever written” (Jones 1943, p. 223), while Saunders and O’Malley (1973/1950, pp. 19–22) state the Fabrica “is without doubt the greatest single contribution to the medical sciences … [marking] a new era in anatomical illustration.” There are a number of reasons for the dramatic impact of Fabrica: in the first place, it marked the first effective collaboration between artist and anatomist in the production of a “cohesive, illustrated anatomical publication” (Cavalcanti et al.

2009, p. 15); secondly, it provided through both illustration and text a powerful argument for a new way of seeing anatomy within the context of empirical research; thirdly, it responded to, and impacted Renaissance ideology by both referencing the past and suggesting a progressive philosophico‐religious humanist approach; in this it capitalized on Renaissance attitudes to death and morality; and finally, it was able to capitalize on newly emerging technologies of printing and distribution. The Fabrica depicts Vesalius’s dissections of the human body in detailed illustrations, enhanced by the skills of Renaissance perspective drawing. The illustrations were presented as artworks in themselves, the most famous being three skeletons and 14 “muscle‐men”: anatomized figures standing as if grotesquely alive, skin peeled away, against a picturesque Paduan landscape. The images are displayed in myological sequence with gradual removal of various layers of skin and muscle. The macabre is heightened by the knowledge that the cadavers are, in most cases, those of criminals, from a time when the concept of a flayed body was considered particularly gruesome.1 The history of dissection dates back to Alcmaeon of Croton who undertook anatomical observation through the dissection of animals around 500 bce (Blits 1999, p. 59; Darlington 1986, p. 263), while the first systematic human dissections were performed in the third century bce by Herophilus of Alexandria (Prioreschi 2001, p. 229).

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By the time of the quintessential work of Galen of Pergamum (129–216/217 ce) (Di Ieva et al. 2007; Ghosh 2015), however, systematic human dissection had ceased.

This was due to a number of factors including sporadic religious injunctions2 and ­popular consternation and fears, along with the practical difficulty in the fixing of ­cadavers (Di Ieva et al. 2007, p. 1; Ghosh 2015, p. 176; Olry 1997, p. 113). Galen performed no dissections on humans (Mattern 2013, pp. 75, 150–151, 223; Sarton 1954, pp. 41–42; Spencer 1922, p. 385) and his anatomical theories were based largely on the dissection of animals and the observation of gladiator wounds. Supported by the Church, they were accepted largely as fact, and while his works were purely textual, his theories held sway until the sixteenth century.3 By the Renaissance, the practice and perception of dissection was undergoing a significant shift, which was intensified by the success of the Fabrica.

The Fabrica worked to legitimate the discourse of anatomy through both its connections to humanistic discourse and the concept of empirical knowledge. As such, the Fabrica was at the same time a referencing of the past, whilst also acting as a comprehensively modern approach; it referenced traditional knowledge – through Galen, in particular – but also acted as a powerful critique of the traditional approaches.

Based on his considerable experience in dissection, the high‐quality illustrations in Vesalius’s Fabrica can be seen, in themselves, and also in conjunction with the text, as an argument for both human dissection as a tool to investigate classical knowledge, and for the re‐establishment of empirical investigation generally (Carlino 1994, p. 1).

These illustrations referenced the past through their existence as a significant component of the work, through their form as reference to classical sculpture, and as key signifiers of philosophico‐religious underpinnings. Whilst emphasizing the connections to antiquity, they also placed the work within a modern Renaissance ideology.

In semiotic analysis, we take it that an image, or indeed any designed artifact, speaks to us, interpellating us as subjects within ideology (Althusser 1971). For Roland Barthes, the way something speaks to us is through the activation of myths (Barthes 1977, 1993/1957) – what we might call narratives that we use to make sense of the world. Importantly, these narratives have no necessary truth value; they may be truthful to some extent, within a particular context, or not, but serve to naturalize socially constructed positions. One of the tasks of semiotics is the decontextualizing of the image, and the concurrent recontextualizing of it within a different field of knowledge, in order to denaturalize the mythical content. Barthes demonstrates this with his example of a young negro soldier saluting the French flag, from the cover of Paris Match (Barthes 1993/1957). The photograph works to signify a dramatic narrative of French nationalism and pride, suitably inspirational and attractive to a certain target market. Barthes, however, takes the image out of context, regarding it not from the perspective of reader of the magazine, but as social and cultural critic. Barthes recontextualizes the image within a new social, political, and cultural analytical framework which brings to the surface racial ideological content, suggesting an underlying narrative which connotes the power of French imperialism. This imposition of different contexts can be used to highlight how an image speaks in terms of race, gender, class, or any other socially constructed criteria we choose to employ.

In order to recognize the connotations and myths being activated by an image, we require a knowledge of the ideological world‐view – that is, the cultural myths available to be activated – out of which the image has emerged. In the case of, say, a current advertisement in one’s own culture, this presents little difficulty. However, when attempting to analyze a design artifact such as Vesalius’s Fabrica we require as much understanding as possible of the cultural context out of which the work emerged.

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This is always a perilous undertaking, but semiotics can provide such a powerful way of conceptualizing the political content of design artifacts, offering new insights into the culture out of which the artifacts emerged, that I would argue it is a risk worth taking. A significant proportion of this chapter, as with any such semiotic analysis, must in part be a social history, but without this, we run the risk of anachronistically seeing the work entirely through our own cultural ideological framework, a useless exercise at best, and at worst, an inappropriate and misleading venture.

Rather than seeing the Renaissance as a period of time, it is perhaps more usefully characterized as a confluence of related ways of seeing and knowing the world; even, as Wiegand notes, “a mode of life” (Wiegand 1952, p. 574). In large part, it occurred as the result of a marked increase in interest in classical Greece and Rome, greatly amplified by the arrival of Byzantine scholars in Europe, along with ancient texts previously unavailable to European scholars. The Renaissance was also, in many ways, a reaction to the Middle Ages, and much of its character was related to the development of humanism4 – an approach tied essentially to the notion that “man” has greater prominence in relation to God than was believed in medieval scholasticism. Along with this was a concurrent and related interest for many in the empirical investigation of the natural world. It is within this context that the illustrations in Vesalius’s Fabrica can be seen as a strategic argument for a new way of understanding human anatomy, and, as such, acted as a major component in the emergence of a new medical ­discourse.

The analytical framework in this chapter employs Foucault’s (1994/1966) notion of discourse whereby certain practices are brought together as a unity. Through this process, practices – some of which may be contiguous and others quite disparate – are linked, develop a critical mass of participants, and are officially sanctified through a professional language with concurrent systems of accreditation which specify what may be practiced and by whom. In Foucault’s explication, for example, of medical (Foucault 1994/1973) and legal discourses (Foucault 1991/1975), there is separation from other neighboring discourses through a specialized language and a legitimizing historical narrative. This chapter seeks to excavate the historical conditions which allowed for the Fabrica, as strategic argument, to emerge and which contributed to its impact on medical discourse.

Illustration and Human Anatomy The traditional approach to anatomy, exemplified by the Galenists, was strongly opposed to anatomical illustration. Vesalius’s teacher, Sylvius, stated that illustration was “at best, only to gratify the eyes of silly women,” and that it was a “hindrance” to anatomical understanding (Feuer 1992/1963, p. 172). Vesalius was not the first to use illustrations in anatomical publications, but the Fabrica capitalized on the skills of Renaissance artists to produce the first comprehensive anatomical investigation using high‐quality, detailed illustration along with rigorous textual commentary. Vesalius’s 1543 publication of the Fabrica brought together dissection and illustration to such effect that, by the eighteenth century, Bell was able to announce that an anatomy text without illustration was “no better than a book of geography without maps” (Bell qtd. in Kemp 2010, p. 193). There is considerable disagreement on precisely which artist, or artists, contributed to the publication, although the current consensus is that Titian’s student, the Flemish Calcar,5 had a key role, with others contributing (Darlington 1986, pp. 264–265). The identity of the artists has been covered in

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considerable detail (Guerra 1969; Kemp 1970, p. 282; Saunders and O’Malley 1973/1950, pp. 25–29) and suggests that, while some of the works almost certainly came from the atelier of Titian, some plates came from the hand of Vesalius himself.

Kemp, however, makes the salient point that whoever the artists were, Vesalius took a significant role in directing the work (Kemp 1970, pp. 280–282); although not, it seems, without some difficulty. Vesalius suggested “the preparation of the dissections, and the direction of the eye, hand, and intelligence of the artists, had cost him a monstrous amount of labour” (Spencer 1922, p. 389), and that “the artists tormented him by their obstinacy until he felt more unfortunate than the bodies he dissected” (Jones 1943, p. 223). This may be a reason the artists were not credited, but, along with Vesalius’s variety in the use of personal pronouns in describing the artists, also suggests the talents of more than one artist were employed. In exploring the factors that allowed for the emergence and success of the Fabrica, it is useful to understand the relation between artists and the practices of anatomical dissection.

There is no evidence that artists practiced dissection (Darlington 1986, p. 263) until the early fifteenth century when anatomical observation became seen as useful in their studies. The Renaissance, however, saw an increasing association between anatomy and illustration, with artists looking to anatomy to better represent the outer human form, and anatomists looking to illustrators to help depict the inner workings of the body (Di Ieva et al. 2007, p. 2). Numerous collaborations between artists and anatomists appeared from the fifteenth century onwards (Saunders and O’Malley 1973/1950, p. 22; Tsafrir and Ohry 2001), with some artists performing their own dissections. This arose largely as a result of what Saunders and O’Malley (1973/1950, p. 22) note as “the emergence in the realm of art of a new dogma of aesthetic theory which stated that a work of art is a direct and faithful representation of natural phenomena.” Hauser (1972, p. 2) contends that the stress on naturalism as an emergent feature in the art of the Renaissance is not entirely accurate: In the art of the Renaissance not naturalism in itself but merely the scientific, methodical, totalitarian character of naturalism was new, and that not the observation and analysis of reality, but merely the conscious deliberation and consistency with which the criteria of reality were registered and analysed were in advance of medieval conceptions … the work of art became a “study of nature.”

Writing sometime prior to 1448, sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti argued the importance for artists of attending dissections (Mayor 1983/1964, pp. 127–128) and Vasari’s Lives of the Artists suggests that Florentine sculptor Antonio Pollaiuolo (1431/1432– 1498) was the “first master to skin many human bodies in order to investigate the muscles and understand the nude in a more modern way” (qtd. in Bambach 2002, p.

71). While Cavalcanti et al. (2009, pp. 1–2) contend that most artists became involved with anatomy during the Renaissance and thereafter, Bambach (2002) suggests that, although a number of masters employed dissection, and some patrons came to expect it, most artists limited their investigation to the body’s surface. Although actual dissection may have been beyond most artists, certainly, Verrochio, Mantegna, Signorelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo,6 Raphael, and Dürer are all known to have dissected cadavers to better study the human form (Darlington 1986, p. 263; Feuer 1992/1963, p.

169; Spencer 1922, p. 385; Tsafrir and Ohry 2001). Leonardo collaborated for a number of years with Marcantonio della Torre, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pavia (Cavalcanti et al. 2009, p. 12), performing at least 30 dissections on human

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cadavers (Jones 1943, p. 223; Netter and Friedlaender 2014, p. 812; Spencer 1922, p. 385; Tsafrir and Ohry 2001, n.p.). Although artists, exemplified by Leonardo, often produced notebooks of their illustrations, these were not used in medical texts.

Jones (1943, p. 223) notes: “Leonardo was the first to create a new anatomy, but he created it for himself alone.” Scholars have found no link between the works of Leonardo and Vesalius (Singer and Rabin 1946, p. iii; Spencer 1922, p. 388).

Aristotle’s lost “diagrams” of animal anatomy may be the first anatomical illustrations and he used illustrations in his anatomical lectures, incidentally providing a legitimizing historical lineage of the practice; although this was largely ignored by Vesalius’s contemporaries (Blits 1999, p. 60; Singer and Rabin 1946, pp. iv–v). The first use of illustrations based on the dissection of human cadavers appears to be by Mondino’s pupil, Guido da Vigevano, in a manuscript of 1345 (Di Ieva et al. 2007, p. 2; Ghosh 2015, pp. 175–176; Olry 1997, p. 113). From this point on, the use of anatomical illustration in textbooks became increasingly popular (Olry 1997, p. 113). The first printed medical work reflecting Renaissance art influences was the Fasciculus Medicinae, produced in 1491, with the first illustrated anatomical text, Berengario’s Commentary of 1521, based on the work of Mondino (Saunders and O’Malley 1973/1950, p. 23). Berengario dissected numerous bodies and prefigured Vesalius’s “muscle‐men” by not only presenting dissected bodies against picturesque scenery, but by also having them in dramatic poses. Kemp (1996, p. 49) notes too that Berengario was a protégé of the printer Manutius, and was thus “well placed in making his book effective in its social, intellectual, and commercial environment.”

However, the quality of the illustrations was far inferior to those of Vesalius, and the Commentary never gained the ground‐breaking stature of the Fabrica. As well as Berengario, Estienne had used illustrations from 1532. The use of illustrated human anatomy could also be seen in a number of commercially successful anatomical fugitive sheets from 1538 onwards. Designed for popular consumption throughout Europe, they contained anatomical illustrations of varying quality, printed on separate flaps of paper that could be lifted to reveal the inner organs (Carlino 1995, p.

53). Vesalius also published a series of six illustrated sheets, the Tabulae anatomicae sex, in 1538, as a “memory aid” and adjunct to student manuals which generally contained no illustrations (Carlino 1995, p. 62). This led to printers developing further fugitive sheets for professional consumption, in competition with the Tabulae, and we might suggest that, knowing this, and the success of Berengario’s Commentary, Vesalius was cognizant of the commercial possibilities for the Fabrica.

Notably, these fugitive sheets kept strictly to the Galenic tradition and it was not until the printing of the Fabrica that Vesalius fully employed illustration to argue against these traditions.

The Argument for Empirical Research and Human Dissection At the time of the production of the Fabrica, the notion of empirical research was hotly debated. As a number of researchers have noted, the Renaissance was not an immediate blossoming of scientific method; indeed, this was slow to emerge largely because of an adherence to literary exploration rather than to studies from nature (Prioreschi 2001, p. 229; Sarton 1953, p. 5). The early re‐emergence of empiricism can be seen in Berengario, who was the first to argue against certain brain structures on the reasoning that he had not ever been able to find it (Ginn and Lorusso 2008,

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p. 298; O’Malley 1964). Vesalius was a humanist, from a lineage of medical practitioners, and humanism was a key underpinning in his approach to medicine (Carlino 1994, p. 39, n. 49; Pagel and Rattansi 1964, p. 323). Although this involved embracing the wisdom of the ancients, Vesalius rejected those humanist notions which privileged knowledge passed down from great thinkers over personal observation.7 Like Leonardo before him, he considered empirical investigation to be essential and used it extensively in the dissection of human cadavers (Pagel and Rattansi 1964, pp. 320– 325). Through these investigations, he was able in the Fabrica to correct some critical errors in Galen’s work; causing considerable consternation among many followers of Galen who were largely opponents of empirical research. Vesalius also promoted illustration as a significant accompaniment to the text, as opposed to earlier works, which had it as subordinate. Importantly, this strategically aligned the Fabrica with “the dictates of Greek and medieval biologists and physicians who sought to chart and reproduce the human body in images” (Carlino 1994, p. 1).

In semiotics, the emphasis is usually placed on the work itself, but it would be remiss to de‐emphasize the agency of the author in this instance; and it is worth noting the political machinations out of which the Fabrica emerged. In a sense,8 and against his protestations to the contrary, Vesalius could be regarded as seeking to dethrone Galen as the principal authority in anatomy; and the Fabrica might be considered the vehicle for his coup. This is exemplified in Vesalius’s introduction where he states: I have no intention whatever of criticizing the false teachings of Galen, who is easily first among professors of dissection, for I certainly do not wish to start off by ­gaining a reputation for impiety toward him, the author of all good things, or by seeming insubordinate to his authority. For I am well aware how upset the practitioners … invariably become nowadays, when they discover in the course of a single dissection that Galen has departed on two hundred or more occasions from the true description of the harmony, function, and action of the human parts …

(Vesalius 1998, p. liv)

This comment underscores a perhaps more important maneuver, which is the critique not only of Galen, but more importantly of those who “blindly” followed him, and who Vesalius was to reproach at considerable length throughout the volume (Carlino 1994, p. 206). The Fabrica was not a complete break from Galen, as Vesalius continued to use many of Galen’s observations – some of which were, in themselves, incorrect – yet the Fabrica is primarily an argument for direct observations from nature as part of the humanist approach to anatomy. As such, it was primarily supporting empirical research as had been practiced by past masters, including Galen and Aristotle, in opposition to the reliance on their observations alone, but in opposition to Galen and his contemporary followers was reinforcing the value of empirical research in human anatomy. In semiotic terms, we can note Vesalius uses a number of visual signifiers to suggest the superiority of the Fabrica to previous works. Cases in point are some of the illustrated initial letters throughout the work, and in the frontispiece illustration, in which Vesalius performs a dissection. In the foreground are a dog, a goat, and a monkey, which have been suggested to represent the notion that after Vesalius had dissected the human cadaver, he would then go on to animal dissections to illustrate specific anatomical features, but I lean toward the alternative observation (Barr 2015, p. 2; Spencer 1922, p. 391) that the animals

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signify the Galenic approach, which was based on animal rather than human dissections, and to which the Fabrica attributes numerous errors. Vesalius thus uses illustrative metaphor to position his own technique as dramatically different, and ultimately superior to Galen’s limited approach. The initial letters throughout the work are enclosed by vignettes which depict dissections of both human cadavers and animals, suggesting again the imperative of empirical observation (Spencer 1922, p.

392). The vignette surrounding the letter V in the preface to the second edition of the Fabrica is particularly interesting in that it portrays Marsyas, who, depending on the version of the story, inspired jealousy in – or had the audacity to challenge – Apollo, and was skinned alive for his arrogance. This appears to be a rebuke to Vesalius’s ­critics (Spencer 1922, p. 393).

To understand the potential connotations of Vesalius’s illustrated dissections, we must explore two key ideological conditions in the Renaissance – the first is the approach to dissection, and the second, the way that death, and execution in particular, is understood. Sawday (1995) describes the Renaissance in terms of a “culture of dissection”: that is, a “culture of enquiry: an incisive recomposition of the human body, which entailed an equivalent refashioning of the means by which people made sense of the world around them” (Sawday 1995, p. 13). It should be noted, however, that human dissection was not without detractors, and beyond the Fabrica’s role as an argument for empirical research, it was also an important tactic in gaining broader acceptance of the practice. Human dissection had almost disappeared from history for 1500 years, abandoned after the work of Herophilus (Prioreschi 2001, p. 229). By the late Middle Ages, in some parts of Europe, however, attitudes to human dissection had become muddied, with bodies being opened to explore miraculous events, for preservation purposes, and for forensic investigation (Park 1994). Hervé et al. (2014, p. 18) note that “regular anatomical openings are known from the 13th century, particularly in south Italy, regulated by the authorities (including the Church).” Human dissection toward the end of the thirteenth century was applied in a number of contexts including public health, criminal justice, and medical research and teaching (Hervé et al. 2014, p. 18; O’Malley 1964, pp. 12–13). By the early fourteenth century public dissection on cadavers was approved under certain conditions, with the first officially sanctioned dissection of the human body performed by Mondino de’Liucci9 at Bologna University in 1315 (Darlington 1986, p. 263; Di Ieva et al.

2007, p. 1). Mondino wrote the Anothomia,10 around 1316, which O’Malley (1964, p. 13) suggests is the “first modern work on anatomy in that it is wholly devoted to its subject, so recognizing anatomy as a distinct discipline.” When it was finally published in 1478, it provided an important stake in the emergent discourse of anatomy.

Mondino is regarded as having been the first in Europe to use human cadavers to teach anatomy (Olry 1997, p. 114), performing the dissections himself (Di Ieva et al.

2007, p. 1), and as Ginn and Lorusso (2008, p. 298) note, Mondino provided the model for all anatomizing well into the 1500s. Yet, even in Mondino’s Anothomia, we can see religious concerns with aspects of dissection, where he refrains from boiling the bones of the skull, “owing to the sin involved in this” – a reference to the 1299 Papal bull prohibiting the process (O’Malley 1964, p. 14). Following Bologna, dissections began to appear throughout most of the major universities in Italy (O’Malley 1964, p. 15). By the fifteenth century, the practice of embalming bodies for entombment saw increased skills in tissue preservation, which significantly aided dissection (Cavalcanti et al. 2009, p. 2). By the sixteenth century, anatomy was becoming in a sense “fashionable”: some families were able to afford their own private dissection

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rooms, public anatomical demonstrations were performed as social events, and hospitals had their own anatomists able to perform dissections (Cavalcanti et al. 2009, pp. 2–3). Having said this, attitudes varied across the continent, and in England, for example, the practice had only limited acceptance.

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Renaissance Attitudes to Death and Punishment The discourse around dissection and its representation was impacted not only by traditions of strict reliance on past authorities, but also by Renaissance attitudes to death. In order to understand Renaissance attitudes to human dissection, as well as to gain some sense of the ideology that surrounded and permeated the Fabrica, it is necessary to understand Renaissance attitudes to death and punishment. Even for those who championed observation from nature, working with cadavers was a challenging ordeal. There was considerable fear, even among physicians, “of contamination by proximity to the impure and malodorous bodies of the deceased in funerary practice” whereby practitioners dealing with corpses had to “overcome their revulsion toward the cadaver” (Carlino 1994, pp. 6–7). Cavalcanti et al.

(2009, p. 6) warn that contemporary interpretation of the interest in dissection as “morbid eroticism” reflects a nineteenth‐century moral attitude rather than that of the Renaissance. Whilst there can be no refuting that notions of death in the Renaissance would be, in many ways, incomprehensible to us today, we might excavate from the historical records some sense of its perception and the attitudes surrounding it.

Stone (qtd. in Sawday 1988, p. 16) suggests “the most striking feature which distinguished the early modern family from that of today … was the constant presence of death.” Most notably, the Black Death, which had reached Europe in the late 1350s and wiped out an estimated 25 million people, remained a threat for centuries.

This was not a “hidden” disease but one which, by its dramatic expansiveness, was visibly present, especially in the cities of Europe. In addition to this, a series of wars ravaged Europe; with Italy, in particular, suffering the “Renaissance wars” beginning with the brutal “Sack of Naples” in 1495, but continuing on until 1559 (Mallett and Shaw 2012). Given that the human cadavers used for dissection, however, came largely from executed criminals, and thus issues of morality permeated the practice, it is necessary to attempt to apprehend some notion of the Renaissance attitude to death by execution.

Although Gillis (1987, pp. 603–604) notes that throughout the Renaissance crime decreased and violent punishment tended to be used more for political suppression, when executions were performed, they were gruesome affairs, and witnessing them was part of the public spectacle. Merback (1999, p. 158) argues that “after hanging, breaking the body with the wheel was the most common form of aggravated execution from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth century,” describing the dominant Germanic version: Under the arms of the condemned man timbers are placed on the ground, and the executioner or a criminal breaks his arms with a wooden wheel, then breaks both his legs, and then with the same wheel breaks the man’s back. Then broken and shattered, the man is raised on the wheel and set atop a large beam upright in the ground – there the wretch is left, breathing with difficulty. (1999, p. 158)

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Merback (1999) describes that the victim was “transformed … into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh … mixed up with splinters of smashed bones” (pp. 160–161). The victim was then raised to be viewed by the public. Brackett (1992) reports that by the late sixteenth century in Florence, assassination, which was common, was considered particularly heinous and penalties were severe: “Of two men convicted of assassinio in 1595, one was hanged and then quartered, and the other was sent to the galleys for five years after having been forced to watch the execution of his partner” (p. 105).

In 1593 hired assassins, caught after killing two Bolognese counts, were “sentenced to be carried through the streets of Florence in a cart to Piazza Santo Spirito, where their right hands were amputated; they were then hanged and quartered. Their corpses were taken outside the gates … and burned.” Conspiracy against the state was a capital offense, and Brackett (1992) recounts numerous executions carried out for this conviction, noting that two culprits “were both hanged from the windows of the Bargello” (p. 128). Death thus had a significant visible presence for people of the Renaissance, as public display was a significant part of many executions. This was primarily as a warning for others, but, in cases where the prisoner was denied a Christian burial, as a compounding of the execution process. Sawday (1995, pp. 55–56) describes the implications of gibbeting, where the execution method involved being hung on display to die, often from thirst:

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To be gibbeted, to be exposed after execution to public gaze, was a fate reserved for the worst malefactors, since it compounded the punishment with a denial of Christian burial … a shaming and punishing ordeal of exposure … Refused burial, exposed to public view, the soul, too, was held to have been punished by not being granted peace.

Thus, the scene could have powerful religious connotations, and, as Merback suggests, rather than a “theatre of cruelty” was often a “drama of Christian repentance, purification and salvation” (1999, pp. 146ff.). This suggests the spectacle of brutal death for Renaissance people could be linked with either godliness or lack thereof.

Indeed, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction of St. Bartholomew holding his own flayed skin as signifier of his martyrdom was first shown just 31 years before the Fabrica’s publication (Janson 1962, p. 359). Foucault (1991/1975) notes the juridico‐political function of the public execution: Its aim is not so much to re‐establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all‐powerful sovereign who displays his strength … The ceremony of punishment, then, is an exercise of terror … The public execution did not re‐establish justice; it reactivated power. (pp. 48–49)

The response of the audience to public executions, however, was not always predictable. Often, crowds reveled in a festive atmosphere. The wealthy booked windows from which to view the entertainment of an execution, to be enjoyed along with “elaborate breakfasts”; while the rest of the crowd were relegated to the street level and the public houses, where they often spent the previous night in celebratory preparation (Cunningham 1990, p. 213). This carnival atmosphere could equally counteract aims asserting sovereign power, where the reveling crowd would mock the authorities, transforming criminals into heroes; or the punishment would inspire

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shame or indignation against the sovereign. Public executions could set off considerable social turmoil. Foucault (1991/1975, pp. 61–65) cites a number of cases where the crowd rioted against unjust punishments, noting: “For the people who are there and observe, there is always, even in the most extreme vengeance of the sovereign a pretext for revenge.”

Dissection after execution inspired considerable horror, because, like gibbeting, the act was seen to impact on the soul and therefore added a deeper layer to the punishment. Samuel Richardson relates a letter from “a country gentleman in town, to his brother in the country, describing a public execution in London” (Richardson 1928) sometime prior to 1741, which describes the battle between those attempting to remove the bodies for dissection and friends of the victims: As soon as the poor creatures were half‐dead, I was much surprised before such a number of peace‐officers, to see the populace fall to hauling and pulling the carcasses with so much earnestness, as to occasion several warm reencounters [sic], and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of the persons executed … and some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection. The contests between these were fierce and bloody, and frightful to look at. (p. 241)

The fear of dissection after death was in some regards greater than the fear of death itself, as indicated by the report from the Ordinary’s Account: the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (Purney 1725) of the prisoner Vincent Davis:

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During his Consinement he not only sent many Letters to all his former Friends and Acquaintance to form a Company, and prevent the Surgeons in their Designs upon his Body; but at the Chapel strove to conceal his Looks from those whom he suspected to be such: So great were these Apprehensions that he should be Anatomiz’d, that I was told he desired and wish’d he might be hang’d in Chains to prevent it. (n.p.)

Certainly, in the Renaissance, dissection was deemed by many to be both obscene and unholy and that “the procurement and cutting open of cadavers for scientific (thus profane) purposes … were considered religiously and anthropologically dangerous acts” (Carlino 1994, p. 3). Having said that, we can see also that death and dissection were also spectacles of fascination and horror for the public, and were intricately interwoven with religious beliefs and fears.

The Fabrica’s Use of Criminality Vesalius came from a long line of physicians, who Feuer suggests “were aware that medical science knew no religious affiliation” (1992/1963, p. 168). As Singer (Singer and Rabin 1946, p. xxiii) notes, “He never exhibits any but conventional sentiments on religious themes in his books. He disliked priests and monks” and his companions were from all different religious persuasions. We can gain a sense of Vesalius’s personal perspective on death and dissection through this passage written prior to the Fabrica, in which he describes his removal of a body from the gallows in order to reconstruct its skeleton: I climbed the stake and pulled off the femur from the hip bone. While tugging at the specimen, the scapulae together with the arms and hands also followed, although

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the fingers of one hand, both patellae and one foot were missing. After I had brought the legs and arms home in secret … I allowed myself to be shut out of the city in the evening in order to obtain the thorax which was firmly held by a chain. I was burning with so great a desire … that I was not afraid to snatch in the middle of the night what I so longed for. (qtd. in Sawday 1995, p. 196)

While it is difficult not to weave through this story a sense of Victorian gothic horror, the language draws us toward the macabre. It suggests a way of regarding the body, which is in one sense as an inanimate object of professional interest only to Vesalius, yet also underscores a non‐professional and passionate intensity which fetishistically animates the cadaver for the reader. The illegality of Vesalius’s actions in both acquiring the body and the violence he does it in pursuit of his aims positions him as criminal, and thus equates him with the body he steals. Vesalius was also not averse to retrieving bodies from graves, as the need occasionally arose (Feuer 1992/1963, p.

174). Luckily, for Vesalius, four years prior to the publication of Fabrica, a Paduan judge, looking favorably on his work, made available to him the cadavers of criminals who had been executed (BBC 2014). This allowed him considerably more scope in his dissection activities, without the need for body snatching.

It is important to note the sense of horror/fascination attached to the body of executed criminals, and in particular to the act of their dissection – the most intimate manipulation of their cadavers, and one shrouded in religious foreboding. Vesalius’s public dissections were attended not only by students but also by large numbers of the general public.11 The archives of the University of Padua note the number of audience members for his demonstrations at 500 (Spencer 1922, p. 390). Like Galen, whose anatomical demonstrations are compared in Mattern (2013) to “wild beast hunts so popular in the Roman arena,” these dissections were as much a form of entertainment as scholarly practice. I contend that Vesalius was wholly aware of the fascination people had for these practices, and was equally aware that at least part of that fascination came from the fact that many dissections were performed on executed criminals.

Kemp (1996, p. 47) relates the earliest published illustration, from 1517, which makes clear the subject is a hanged criminal, noting the sense of retribution apparent in both the illustration and the associated text: As befits an illustration by a printmaker in the succession of Dürer … the criminal is portrayed with tortured face and savagely twisted right arm. The fact that the man was a vile criminal is underlined in the caption as a strategy to sanction the gory display.

Vesalius was experienced in dealing with the horror/fascination in his audiences, and complains of how students become fixated on the “monstrous” bodily defects that sometimes emerge in the course of dissections (Kusukawa 2005, p. 8). In the semiotic sense, we might read the Fabrica as, in some regards, the illustrative manifestation of Vesalius’s public dissection performances, appropriating the horror/fascination they induced. I suggest that through these, criminality becomes available as a strategy not only to justify, or at least to ameliorate, trepidations surrounding human dissection, but also, through the mythology surrounding the criminal body, to invoke the horror/fascination associated with the horror of their deaths; indeed, in the Fabrica, to amplify it through the explicit detail. In this sense, the myological ­stripping of flesh and muscle from the Vesalian “muscle‐men,” and the melancholy skeletons, act as a stage‐by‐stage performance of a macabre drama of contrition.

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Figure 20.1 Illustration on page 190 of De corporis humani fabrica libri septem by Andreas Vesalius. Source: US National Library of Medicine/Historical Anatomies on the Web. Public Domain.

Perhaps most dramatic of the Vesalian illustrations is that of Figure 20.1, where the partially dissected figure is suspended – functionally to show the opened scapula – but where other bodies appear to stand of their own volition, this figure displays the tortured aspect reminiscent of the flayed criminal (see Figure 20.1). While Harcourt (1987, p. 38) suggests that Vesalius’s figures “insulate the representation of his practice from the complex of moral ambiguities in which it was actually embedded,” I would argue that they in fact signify the victim as criminal, and that Vesalius thereby infused the discourse of criminality and morality throughout the Fabrica. As Prioreschi (2001, p. 231) has shown, it was well known that dissections were almost exclusively carried out on the cadavers of executed criminals. Berbara (2013, pp. 408–409) also notes that there existed throughout the period “a strong current of macabre art” and relates this to the notion of “beauty, conceived according to classical canons … associated both to moral and medical dimensions of death.” Merback (1999) suggests “The body under duress … gives ‘testimony’ to a reality that surpasses ordinariness.”

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Yet even the “tortured” poses and expressions of Vesalius’s figures are staged, as performance. The illustrations are pristine, yet intricately detailed, appropriating the sense of the real from the original body dissected, yet stripping it of its corporeality.

On viewing the Fabrica, and I would argue this was the case as much for the Renaissance viewer as for today’s reader, one is led to ask: “Who are these dissected bodies?” There can be no doubt that even in the Renaissance, through the connotations of the Vesalian illustrations as people, who in death had been dissected, ran an undercurrent element of horror/fascination.

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Illustrative Style and Renaissance Ideology In regard to apprehending a dramatic sense of the macabre in his illustrations, Vesalius was able to capitalize on Mannerism, the current style of Renaissance art.

Maniates (1979, p. 87) notes a central idea of Mannerism was “the concept of the work of art as an enduring virtuoso performance”; while Edelman notes the tendency toward “sensuousness, horror, recognition of vulnerability, melancholy” (1995, p. 21). Duffin and Wolfe (2014, p. 857) point to the Mannerist elements of the Vesalian images: “the elongated bodies, set beside architectural elements or in landscapes with low horizons.” While critics have argued that some artists illustrating anatomy works may have employed the style with little regard to the textual content or intention (Tsafrir and Ohry 2001), or that the backgrounds or “props” are “a streak of Vesalian fantasy” to enhance the work (O’Malley 1964, p. 128), I would return to Kemp’s notion that Vesalius was thoroughly involved in directing the illustrations, and that they represent a strategy of staged realism. This is achieved using exquisitely detailed dissected bodies that connoted both criminality and morality within a philosophico‐religious ideological framework and predestined to invoke a sense of fascination/horror. As such, Vesalius was not only utilizing a style of art that heightened the sense of the macabre, he was also able to coextensively appropriate the legitimacy of Renaissance art discourse. In reading the work semiotically, there is little doubt that the form of illustration in the Fabrica makes connotational reference to classical sculpture. This could be seen as a deliberate tactic

by Vesalius to not only anchor his argument for human dissection and empirical investigation in ancient wisdom and techniques of presentation – namely the use of illustration in anatomical instruction – but also to appropriate the legitimacy afforded by the Renaissance reverence of both antiquity and art. This is done through the poses, picturesque scenery, and ancient ruins in both the full skeletons and the muscle‐men; and also through the referencing of Greek sculpture of the anatomized body sections. It is exemplified in the clear correspondence between the visceral figures of book 5 and the “Belvedere Torso” of antiquity (Harcourt 1987, pp. 29–31; Jansen 2014) (see Figure 20.2). The situating of the work at the ­intersection of both medical and art discourses may also, as argued by Tsafrir and Ohry (2001), have served to obviate condemnation of the depictions of human dissection: The picturesque backgrounds, incidentally, served to counteract objections to dissection in the name of medical science, which was still frowned upon, while dissection performed in the name of art, to increase accuracy in depicting the human form and giving it depth and volume, was considered acceptable. (n.p.)

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Figure 20.2 (Left) Illustration on page 190 of De corporis humani fabrica libri septem

by Andreas Vesalius. Source: US National Library of Medicine/Historical Anatomies on the Web. Public Domain. (Right) Belvedere Torso at the Vatican Museum, 2014. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belvedere_Torso_Musei_Vaticani.jpg.

Licensed under CC BY‐SA 3.0.

Singer (1945, p. 425) notes of the Fabrica that one of its primary concerns was “for representational exactness that was the leading characteristic of renaissance art.”

However, rather than posit “representational exactness” in terms of phenomenological accuracy, or scientific objectivism, we might in semiotic terms suggest this as the use of a set of visual signifiers which activate myths connecting the illustrations with particular notions of “real life.” These are often anchored by texts, or images depicting the technologies of the real – dissection tools and the like – which work to naturalize the representations. Kemp suggests the strategic value of Vesalius’s representational technologies: “Vesalius recognized the potential of veridical illustrations as a tool in a way that was integral to his reform of anatomical science,” enacting what Kemp terms a “rhetoric of reality” (Kemp 1996, p. 42).

Critics have condemned the illustrative style of Vesalius and others in the humanist tradition, such as Estienne and Albinus, as one which overpowers the objective accuracy of the anatomist. Bell, for example, bemoans the sturdy and active figures, with an absurd contrast of furious countenances and active limbs, combined with ragged muscles, and naked bones and dissected bowels, which they are busily employed in supporting, forsooth, or even demonstrating with their hands. (qtd. in Kemp 2010, p. 193)

The notion of objectivity as a key component of scientific discourse, aiming to produce a purely “denotative” image, was only to emerge in the 1800s, and we might regard that its precept of objective accuracy suggests an entirely different ideological position with its own discursive formation and associated myths. As ­scientific discourse emerged, the backward casting of the historical net regarded less stylized12 illustration as more “scientific,” whilst those of Vesalius and the like were

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seen to fall short. Kemp, however, offers the incisive observation that, for the period, the works are wholly appropriate, as the presentation of figures within the context of “a grand drama” that relates them to “the ingenuity and workmanship of the supreme artisan” (Kemp 1996, p. 54). Thus, the works are “accurate” within the ideological world‐view of the Renaissance. It should also be noted that in anatomical representations, there is a continual questioning of whether to aim for accuracy with respect to what is seen or to what it known. Dissection is a messy procedure, and the removal of skin and muscle alters the form of muscles below those removed, resulting in confused renderings. Those in the uncovered state no longer maintain their previously covered forms. Berengario, for example, warned his readers that his figures are not a “true likeness … [and] their actual form is better seen in dried vertebrae in cemeteries” (qtd. in Kemp 1996, p. 49). While Vesalius took the approach of reconstructing the muscles as they would be in the undissected body, others depicted the actual scene as witnessed. This is exemplified in Bidloo (see Figure 20.3), who incorporated even the flies drawn to the dissected meat, yet

Figure 20.3 Illustration of liver from Anatomia humani corporis by Johann Someren.

Source: BIU Santé. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/images/index. php?refphot=01956. Public Domain.

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whose faithful representation did little in terms of instructing the anatomy student (Kemp 2010, p. 195). Similarly, anatomists and illustrators had to decide whether to attempt to find an “ideal” specimen or, as was often the case, to construct a Zeuxinian composite from the best parts of the bodies available. We might note the relation between this and Renaissance ideology through Albinus’s argument that “the supreme effort to synthesize the forms of the body in all their inner beauty was entirely appropriate to reveal the magnificence of God’s handiwork” (Kemp 2010, p. 198). Thus, in both ideology and function, the notion of objectivity imposed anachronistically into Renaissance approaches is fraught. Vesalius’s pristine illustrations, instead, activate mythological notions of the purity of medical practice, within a framework befitting current Renaissance ideology.

Although the style of illustration has been criticized as lacking scientific objectivity, Vesalius’s place in scientific discourse was secured by its significance in championing empirical thought. It should be noted, however, that Vesalius also placed the work within a progressive humanist ideology. We can see this in both the illustrative and textual content, whereby Vesalius invokes a philosophico‐religiosity that both justifies and develops his argument. As Koutny‐Jones notes:

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The skeletons depicted in Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica betray more than just an awareness of the importance of osteology in the study of the human body; they also acknowledge the visual currency of the skeleton as a symbol of death by placing it within an allegorical context. (2015, p. 58)

Skeletons had been used in art to signify death for some time prior to the Fabrica.

In the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, leading up to its production, artists like Dürer and Holbein had employed them to great effect. In the early sixteenth century the Danse Macabre, depicting people of different social positions “as skeletons or putrefying corpses leading their living selves toward the grave,” reached a peak of popularity, as did the memento mori, usually represented by a skeleton or skull (Morgan 1999, pp. 125–151). In the Fabrica, Vesalius pointedly suggests the presence of death from the outset, in the frontispiece illustration (see Figure 20.4).

Here, he places a scythe in the hands of a skeleton situated centrally above the cadaver, while Vesalius is depicted dissecting the cadaver below. This suggests the notion of memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death (Carlino 1994, p. 44; Koutny‐ Jones 2015, p. 58), and begins Vesalius’s narrative of death throughout the volume.

This signification is anchored by a piece of text in one of his full‐length images, where a skeleton leans in melancholy contemplation on a plinth, one hand resting on a skull (see Figure 20.5). Koutny‐Jones (2015, p. 56) regards this image as the “main European prototype for the depiction of a Melancholy Death.” The plinth bears the inscription: VIVITVR INGENIO, CAETERA MORTIS ERVNT: “talent [genius or art] lives on, all else is mortal” (Koutny‐Jones 2015, p. 58). Kemp (1996, p. 54) suggests this may be seen in light of “Vesalius’s self‐conscious bid for enduring fame in his hugely ambitious project.” We might also suggest the implication that even the dissected body allows for something of the spirit to continue on13 – an argument against the popular fears associated with dissection and the fate of the soul. Interestingly, Vesalius’s pose in the frontispiece may reference the Platonic/Aristotelian pose from Raphael’s School of Athens (Lacy 2012) – painted only 32 years earlier – thereby

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Figure 20.4 Title page of De corporis humani fabrica libri septem by Andreas Vesalius.

Source: US National Library of Medicine/Historical Anatomies on the Web. Public Domain.

associating him with Greek philosophy, empirical study, and the notion of anatomist as hero. Nutton (2017) suggests the scene “emphasises the almost sacral character of what is to come.”

The positioning of the Fabrica as philosophically charged and as an acclamation and celebration of the “constructive artistry of God” (Vesalius 1998, p. 163) may be

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Figure 20.5 Illustration on page 164 of De corporis humani fabrica libri septem by Andreas Vesalius. Source: US National Library of Medicine/Historical Anatomies on the Web. Public Domain.

seen as an effect of the Renaissance ideology noted above, but also worked to justify Vesalius’s approach and strengthen his progressive humanist argument. Vesalius was acutely (and accurately, it turns out) aware his illustrated dissections would likely be perceived negatively and the undercurrent of philosophico‐religious connotations allows Vesalius to legitimize his work in terms of the traditional discourse. One of the most powerful themes throughout Galen’s work is the notion of the inner workings of the human body as evidence of the technical skill of the creator (Mattern 2013, p. 169). However, although Vesalius’s images, and the more than 20 references to the wisdom and skill of God within Book One alone, could be argued as typifying Renaissance Christianity, Vesalius demonstrates a particularly progressive humanist relation to God. Here, the human body is approached not as sacred but as a glorious testament to God’s creation, and importantly, to be rightfully explored in the discovery of how God creates and, in a sense, even “thinks.” The anatomist is further heroized, and dissection presented as the apparatus which allows us to better marvel

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at God’s handiwork. Following are but a few references (Vesalius 1998) that underscore this approach: For the moment it is sufficient to describe the different types and natures of joints, and to notice in them the purpose of the Creator … (p. 32) …would create an obstacle to a most fascinating examination of the works of God (p. 32) God, the great Creator of all things, formed its substance to this specification with good reason … (p. 32) One must admire the skill of the supreme Creator of the world in constructing the thorax … (p. 207) The joints show how cleverly Nature designed all this for the movements which we make with our legs; no one can contemplate them without being lost in admiration for our Creator … (p. 332)

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The shift in the perceived relationship between man and God can be seen to characterize the Renaissance itself (Kemp and Wallace 2000, p. 13) and the Fabrica stands as one of the key texts which signifies and certainly contributed to this shift. The notion of “man as the measure of all things,” popularized in the Renaissance, is only possible through the concurrent resignification of God’s work as discoverable.

Kusukawa (2005, p. 3) also proposes the title De Fabrica Humani Corporis indicates a Christianized Galenic lineage to Theophilus Protospatharius’s seventh‐century work De Corporis Humani Fabrica, noting that thus Vesalius suggests the viewpoint of Theophilus’s perspective of the human body as “a creation of God” and “container of the soul … [and] more divine than other animals.” As Sawday (1988) remarks: In part we might attribute the mythology which came to surround Vesalius and his followers to their positions as interpreters not just of bodies which have ceased to live but, because of the old correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm, of the very structure of the divine plan of creation. (p. 16)

Printing The positioning of the Fabrica within Renaissance art discourse was facilitated by the relatively new field of printing. Since Gutenberg’s mastering of the technique around 1450, printing had proved so successful that by 1500, printers had opened in almost 80 towns or cities in Italy alone, printing around 12 000 editions (Richardson 1999, pp. 4–5). As Nutton notes: “Vesalius is among the very first medical writers to exploit the ability of the printing press to transport a message safely and quickly to a large audience – and of the printers and booksellers to arrange for its distribution over the whole of Europe” (Nutton 2017). A significant contributor to the success of the Fabrica, and its concurrent impact on the discourse of anatomy, was also its ability to capitalize on a set of newly emergent technologies within the printing industry. In semiotic terms, we cannot place too much emphasis on the legitimizing potential of signifiers that position a work as momentous. The Fabrica, with its combination of text and large illustrations, exploited the advanced techniques of both text and woodblock printing (Wiegand 1952); and the quality of the woodblock prints became one of the key contributors to its fame (Rollins 1943, p. 133). This enabled the Fabrica to portray the spectacle of the illustrative works, and their associated connotations, with more dramatic effect than had previously been accomplished in any printed publication. Vesalius placed particular

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importance on conveying the tangible qualities afforded by the latest printing technologies, and instead of sending the work to Venice – the center of the Italian printing industry – had the work transported by mule (a long and hazardous journey) to the printer Oporinus in Basle. Johannes Oporinus was a leading scholar‐printer in Europe and friend to Vesalius (Fisch 1943, p. 245) and thus may have allowed for Vesalius to have greater control over the work.14 Vesalius stayed in Basle at least seven months, in part at least to supervise the printing of the Fabrica15 (Pagel and Rattansi 1964, pp. 309, 315). Unlike other books printed in Basle, the second edition of the Fabrica was printed using a delicate new French typeface, Garamond, with the final result a master work of printing, beyond anything done before or since by the printer.16 The work was prized as much within art discourse as it was in that of medicine, and Saunders and O’Malley (1973/1950) note Fabrica’s credentials as an artwork through its “format, typography and illustration.” The work was not only “prized for the anatomical engravings by Jan Stevenszoon Calcar,” but “provided models for artists interested in the detailed musculature of the human nude” (Maniates 1979, p. 87). It continued to be used as a sourcebook for artists into the nineteenth century (Kemp 1970, p. 288). Indeed, some interlocutors have suggested that, if not for the quality of the illustrations and printing, Fabrica would have achieved nothing of the popularity and significance it did (Ivins 1952).17 As a result of the insistence on a high‐quality work in all aspects of its production, the Fabrica was an expensive publication, out of the reach of most medical ­students. Its primary market was intended to be wealthy physicians, classical scholars, and other connoisseurs (Park 2013, p. 5). As Nutton (2017) suggests: “It turned the act of dissection from a manual skill to something to be contemplated and enjoyed by a gentleman.” As such, the work became one of the classical medical texts, but instead of being relegated to a privileged minority, numerous cheap, plagiarized copies became quickly available, increasing its fame throughout Europe and beyond.

Although some authors note the Fabrica’s impact as revolutionary, the Galenist approach continued to be supported and used for many years after the Fabrica’s arrival, and indeed, the publication of the Fabrica was in many ways a disaster for Vesalius. The Galenist backlash was severe, with Vesalius being termed the “Luther of Anatomy” (Feuer 1992/1963, p. 176). Late in 1543 he destroyed all his medical manuscripts, and as Feuer notes, “his scientific career was virtually terminated, and he was henceforth ‘diverted to the mechanical practice of medicine’”(Feuer 1992/1963, p. 177). Vesalius succeeded his father as surgeon to Charles V, and then moved his services to Philip II of Spain (Spencer 1922, p. 384), but continued to be plagued by Galenist attacks.

Although his later life is shrouded in mystery, there is a suggestion that Vesalius was denounced to the Spanish Inquisition and made to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as penance, and died on the return voyage (Feuer 1992/1963, pp. 178–179). Although his strategy did not protect Vesalius from the criticisms he predicted and feared, the emergence of scientific discourse, with its emphasis on empirical investigation, saw the Fabrica entrenched as a key historical text in anatomy and medicine generally.

Conclusion The approach taken in this chapter has considerable potential in re‐evaluating current medical discourse and medical illustration techniques. Whilst today’s more human‐ centered approaches to medical illustration18 offer much more communicative potential to both patients and medical practitioners, and state‐of‐the‐art technologies19 have done much to reveal both the structure and functions of the inner body, we still

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find a host of traditional myths being activated as part of this discourse. There is much to be gained from the presentation of the body through myths such as the body as mechanism, the myth of scientific objectivity, or myths that anthropomorphize microscopic and chemical phenomena; yet there is always a politics associated with these myths. Each, in their own way, presents not only ways of understanding the structure and workings of the body, but also ways of knowing the body as subject within discursive frameworks. They impact on our perceptions of who we are, and of our place in medical discourse, and in the world. As such, their value should be measured against their power implications, and with regard to their political significations within medical discourse and for their influence on people generally.

Vesalius’s Fabrica can be regarded as a key moment in the Renaissance emergence of medical discourse, claiming for the re‐establishment of empirical investigation and for human dissection, in particular, as a tool to investigate classical knowledge. The work acted as a focal point for the intersecting discourses of medicine, art, and humanistic philosophy. As such, it was well placed to make a powerful argument against Galen’s findings and thus Galen as the principal anatomical authority, whilst simultaneously calling for a renaissance of traditional Galenist approaches to anatomical study, and proposing a new way of knowing anatomy. This was one which appropriated the legitimacy of these discourses, by referencing the past through its use of illustration and empirical investigation applied to the human body, whilst signifying through its illustrations and language a progressive humanistic approach. Vesalius was able, through new printing technologies, to both signify the work as an exclusive art piece in itself and to present the illustrations as Mannerist spectacle, activating popular Renaissance myths around death, criminality, and morality.

It should be noted that Vesalius need not have emphasized death at all in a series of works ostensibly created to depict the dissection of the human body. Certainly, the representation of sections of the body, used frequently by Vesalius, would tend to de‐emphasize the person and may have been more useful for students studying anatomy; while the presentation of full‐length bodies, posed as if alive, yet dissected, in such realistic detail seems an almost deliberately antagonistic maneuver.

Seeing this through the lens of semiotic analysis within a Renaissance ideological framework, however, it might be seen as Vesalius’s crowning achievement.

Legitimized by Vesalius’s numerous anatomical discoveries within a comprehensive text, and the discursive strategies noted above, it created both a horror/fascination and subsequent level of interest and controversy that assisted in securing its place in medical history.

Notes 1 Although flaying as a form of torture was not practiced in the Renaissance, Bohde (2003, pp. 10–11) notes the case of the Venetian commander Bragadin flayed by Turkish troops, which inspired horror. She also notes that partially skinned cadavers were displayed at public dissections.

2 Although the Church was at times opposed to dissection, recent research suggests there is no historical evidence of the Church having a systematic opposition to the dissection of the human body (Hervé et al. 2014).

3 Indeed, Sarton (1948, pp. 7–8) demonstrates how even up until Harvey’s explication in the seventeenth century, Galen’s ideas on the circulation of the blood were still firmly entrenched.

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4 Whilst my approach here uses a social history perspective of the Renaissance, it is still directed largely to art discourse. For a useful account of Renaissance social history and humanism, see Ruggiero (2015). See also Gilbert (1998).

5 Calcar’s name is reported in various forms: Stefan van Kalkar (Darlington 1986); Jan van Kalkar (Saunders and O’Malley 1973/1950); Jan Steven van Kalkar (Kemp 2010); John Stephan von Calcar (McMurrich 1906); Jan Stevenszoon Calcar (Maniates 1979), Jan Stephan van Calcar (Duffin and Wolfe 2014), and Jan Stefan van Calcar (Cavalcanti et al. 2009). Calcar was Flemish (Cavalcanti et al. 2009).

6 Some authors have asserted that Michelangelo inserted his knowledge of anatomy into his Sistine Chapel frescoes, most notably the background of The Creation of Adam, suggesting “As God reaches toward Adam, in order to impart to Adam his soul, God with a host of angels is painted against what appears to be a midsagital [sic] slice of the brain” (Ginn and Lorusso 2008, pp. 306–307).

7 What complicated matters for Vesalius here is that in classical Rome, dissection was in fact delegated to slaves, with doctors “looking over them like master builders.”

Vesalius was aware of this, and whilst in other realms he championed classical learning, he maintained firmly that learning through direct “employment of the hand” was vital (Weisinger 1945, pp. 464–465).

8 That sense is expertly argued by Griselda Pollock (1992) in her discussion of the power machinations of the expressionist painters.

9 Also reported as “dei Luzzi,” or Latinized as Mundinus; Mondino and others had apparently been performing dissections throughout the thirteenth century.

10 Although Darlington (1986) suggests the Anothomia was published in 1315, Olry (1997) notes that it was written around this time but not published until 1478. It should be noted that Infusino et al. (1995) provide a strong argument that, although Mondino performed dissections for teaching, his treatise is based largely on Galen and a number of Arabic and Greek texts from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, rather than on empirical investigation.

11 Dissections were attended by both the medical profession and the public, including “tailors, cobblers, butchers, fish‐sellers, who may have outnumbered students” (Feuer 1992/1963, p. 173).

12 It should be noted that the purported lack of stylization preferred by scientific discourse can be seen, in itself, as an equally stylized depiction, but one which privileges the mythical notion, and related signifiers of unbiased observation.

13 Spencer (1922, p. 400), in fact, translates the Latin ingenio as man’s spirit.

14 Nutton suggests Basle may also have been strategic as it was better placed for book distribution, and was also closer to Charles V, to whom Vesalius was to appeal as patron for the publication.

15 From a recently discovered copy of Fabrica, we can see Vesalius’s deep involvement in the publication process, as medical historian Vivian Nutton (2013), analyzing his notes on the proof, describes: “At one point he instructed his printer how to replace a damaged identifying letter by cutting a thin sliver of wood and inserting it into the block.”

16 Whilst the first edition used a “creditable roman letter,” type historians may be interested to know the italic was the “Basel italic,” which was at the time more popular than the Aldine italic (Rollins 1943, pp. 132–133).

17 It should be noted that this perspective is thoroughly critiqued by a number of key researchers in the area (O’Malley 1953).

18 See, for example, Scheltema (2016).

19 Exemplified by companies like Medi‐mation (2017).

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