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Anatomical Illustrations | ||
On the Fabric of the Human Body was aimed at a wide audience. The book was used by medical students, but it was also intended for people who attended the public dissections which Vesalius gave, the pictures in the book providing them with a visual guide. Vesalius also hoped artists would use the book to help them produce lifelike human images. Furthermore, wealthy members of the public, keen to expand their knowledge, bought books such as On the Fabric of the Human Body. In order to appeal to as many people as possible the book was not only highly detailed, it was brilliantly illustrated. Vesalius understood the appeal of pictures and he also believed that pictures could represent ideas. Because of this the book can give us clues as to what interested people in the time of the Renaissance. Use the information on this page to answer the following questions:
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  The pictures in On the Fabric of the Human Body are not like those found in scientific books today. Bodies are portrayed in natural settings in lifelike, if somewhat gruesome, poses, often of a classical nature. Moreover the old and new worlds are set against each other. Modern anatomical diagrams stand among urns and plinths from ancient Greece and Rome, with scenes from the classical world, such as Roman baths and ruins, in the background.
The pictures in the book show emotions. They create a sense of mortality and suffering which would recur many times over in later works of art. The image of a skeleton contemplating a skull on an altar, inscribed with ‘genius lives on, all else is mortal', became an iconic image featuring in such works as Shakespeare's Hamlet, whilst one holding a gravedigger's spade came to represent death.
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