L'anatomie humaine : Cinq siècles de sciences et d'art

To be useful, an anatomical drawing needs to be as objectively literal as possible, altough this was rarely the case. Drawing is an inherently personal action prone to three potential distortions as scientific evidence. There is the larger influence of period style, the idiom that remains more or less common to a time and place. The Renaissance liver - complete with peripheral lobes, like the horns on early wombs - is not the bulbous Baroque liver, and neither resembles the elongated Neoclassical liver. A period style is modified by personal instinct, without which all art would look the same, as often happens with weaker spirits in stronger circles. Finally, technique, the limits and effect of tools and materials, determines the final cosmetic look of supposedly objective data.

The most chilling invention in the Tabulae anatomicae falls between Mannerism and Modern, the stuff of Gothic horror tales, bad dreams, and drive-in movies. Simply a pair of legs walking, whole to the knees, bared muscle to the pelvis, and a truncated spinal column, it is a half-colossus that posits mindless spectral kinesis as a determined posthumous twitch.


https://archive.org/stream/adrianispigeliid00spie#page/107/mode/1up