Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy by Monique Kornell et al (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy by Monique Kornell et al Emily White Monique Kornell et al., Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2022), 248 pp., 163 ills. Accompanying the 2022 exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy curated by Monique Kornell at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), this lavish catalog examines the ways anatomy has been presented over the years from the early modern period to the present. The striking images in this volume include dissections, antique sculpture, life-size prints, creative paper flaps, and 3-D stereoscopic photographs. Kornell’s inspiration for this exhibition was the GRI’s acquisition of three life-sized prints from the eighteenth century by engraver Antonio Cattani after anatomical sculptures by Ercole Lelli, which are featured in the catalog. Kornell’s research reinforces that many of the illustrated books and prints in this exhibition are the direct result of close collaboration between anatomists and printmakers. This catalog draws on a wide range of media, primarily from the Special Collections of the GRI. Included among these works are titans of anatomical illustrations such as Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogae breves (1523), a first edition of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543), and Govard Bidloo’s Anatomia humani corporis (1685), along with lesser-known innovative anatomy works. Each work in the exhibition is incorporated throughout eight chapters, with additional comparative works and an accompanying fifty-six-item catalog at the end of the volume. Each catalog entry includes a full-page color reproduction with accompanying text that includes information on provenance, formal description, historical context, and their significance to the study of anatomy. The volume begins with an introduction by Italian historian Valeria Finucci overviewing the discipline of anatomy in relation to artistic practices in the Renaissance. Beginning with the landmark reference of Vesalius, Flesh and Bones proceeds thematically through the history of anatomical illustration. Chapter 1 examines key figures in the history of anatomical illustration and lays out a chronology of developments beginning in the mid-sixteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century. Anyone looking for a useful overview of artistic production in conjunction with the scientific field would do well to study Kornell’s research timeline provided. Chapter 2 introduces the artistic concept [End Page 248] of the “living dead” within anatomical illustration and the animation imbued to lifeless bodies and diagrams. The tradition of depicting corpses seemingly among the land of the living is linked to the Dance of Death, “wound men,” and emotive skeletons. Included are examples of écorché figures in the art treatise of Samuel van Hoogstraten (1678) and studies on dissection from Guilio Casseri’s Pentaestheseion (1609). Kornell argues the purpose of the emotion and attitude prescribed to these figures was to “imitate and recapture life and, in doing so, reveal its inner workings” (17). Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the uses of anatomy within the artistic community in formal training and studies of the antique. Kornell turns the attention to the artists responsible for the illustrations and the desire by artists to acquire a knowledge of anatomy, particularly in Italy. Artists not only rendered the body visually but also, in some cases, carried out dissections, made casts from flayed bodies, and studied medical material. Kornell writes that the relationship between the artistic community and the medical world would not become formalized until the late sixteenth century, when anatomy became a tenet of formalized art academies. Engravings by Cornelius Cort in Academy of Fine Arts (1578) and Pietro Francesco Alberti’s Academia d’pitori (ca. 1600) illustrate the study of young apprentices observing skeletons and cadaver dissections. Kornell asserts that alongside the representation of the human body in the Renaissance is the link to ancient Greece and Rome with antique sculpture representing ideal proportions. The research presented in chapter 4 illustrates that the influence of redis-covered ancient sculpture affected historical attitudes concerning the development of anatomical illustrations well into the nineteenth century. Kornell observes that “treating ancient sculptures as a living thing and examining its structural layers was analogous to what Vesalius and his colleagues were doing in studying and teaching...