ANATOMY AND ART. 
The Annual Address 
Read before the Philosophical Society of Washington, 
December 12, 1894. 
BY 
ROBERT FLETCHER, M. D., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 
WASHINGTON : 
JUDD & DETWEILER, PRINTERS. 
1895. [From the Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, 
Vol. XII, 1895.] 
ANATOMY AND ART.* 
BY ROBERT FLETCHER, M. D. 
The question whether art in its early development was at 
all aided by anatomy, and the further inquiry whether the 
aid of anatomy is of any real benefit to art, are not new 
questions. Critics and artists have expressed their opin- 
ions on one or the other side. Mr. Ruskin, with character- 
istic vehemence, has returned a decided negative to both 
questions. Writers on art, being human, are prone to re- 
peat dogmatic rules, and so the assertion is very commonly 
made that the artist who proposes to represent the human 
form, whether in sculpture or in painting, must in part fit 
himself for his work at the dissecting table. It is the pur- 
pose of this address to endeavor to examine the matter from 
a historical point of view chiefly. The rise and progress of 
the study of anatomy, and its rapid advance by means of 
artistic illustrations after the invention of printing, consid- 
ered in relation to art in its earlier age and its later devel- 
opment, will, perhaps, assist in an understanding of the 
subject. 
While anatomy may be defined generally to be the study 
of an organized body, there are many recognized divisions 
of the subject, one only of which concerns the present in- 
quiry- Artistic anatomy comprehends the whole external 
* Annual Address of the President of the Society, delivered at the 
Columbian University, December 12, 1894. 4 
ANATOMY AND AKT. 
form of the body with the superficial veins of the skin and 
the muscles immediately under it. It must also be under- 
stood to include certain external pathological conditions, 
for the leper and the demoniac, the lame and the blind, are 
frequently introduced in early Christian art and in the 
paintings of subsequent times. A better term than artistic 
anatomy, more comprehensive as implying form as well as 
structure, would be artistic morphology. 
It must not be supposed that artistic anatomy, or mor- 
phology, implies only the study of the dead body. The 
flaccid inexpressive muscles can teach little except their 
mechanical attachments and relations. It is function as 
well as structure—physiology as well as anatomy—which 
is of as much, or of more, importance to the artist. Some 
of the differences of opinion on the question at issue are 
doubtless due to the neglect of this distinction. Another 
vital point of artistic morphology is the study of the modi- 
fications which are seen in external form from the influence 
of sex, age, and race. Holman Hunt made a long sojourn 
in Judea before painting his famous picture of Christ among 
the Doctors. Nevertheless, in spite of his close observance? 
a young lady made this comment: “ It is very fine, but one 
can see that the painter was not acquainted with the dis- 
tinctive character of the tribe of Judah; he has given to his 
doctors the flat feet of the tribe of Reuben, whereas the men 
of Judah had highly arched insteps.” 
Occupation, too, puts its distinctive mark upon the human 
figure, and certain joints or muscles become permanently 
enlarged or disfigured. 
It has been already said that the artist should know some- 
thing of pathology before attempting to paint the effect of 
disease. In like manner, he must learn how the muscles 
can assume a most pathetic expressiveness when death is 
imminent from a mortal injury. It has been objected to 
that exquisite statue, The Dying Gladiator, that the pose 
is somewhat theatrical—that the dying man should be prone 
or supine on the ground. Not at all—the two-edged Roman ANATOMY AND ART. 
5 
sword lias pierced bis chest, the lungs are filling with his 
life’s blood, and with shoulders drawn forward he leans upon 
his arm, gasping for breath. He may be thinking of “ his 
young barbarians,” and of “ their Dacian mother,” far away, 
but his position in the death agony is strictly natural. 
There are those who regard with some degree of timid 
dread the introduction of science into art. Art, they affirm, 
is conventional and full of exaggerations, and has nothing 
in common with the precision of science. A great master 
who was not only painter, but sculptor, architect, engineer, 
Leonardo da Vinci, has clearly defined this matter. “In a 
general way,” he says, “it is the office of science to distin- 
guish what is impossible from what is possible. Imagi- 
nation left to herself would revel in unrealizable dreams. 
Science controls her by showing what cannot be. It does 
not follow that science includes the principle of art, but that 
we must study science either before or at the same time with 
art to learn in what limits the latter is to be confined.” 
No doubt a knowledge of anatomy cannot make the 
artist, any more than study and training can make the 
poet—the divine vocation must be there—but spontaneity 
in either is a mere euphemism for indolence, and the world 
is very likely to pass by such work. Art is serious, and is 
not to be regarded as a pastime merely. 
The critic in art would, in like manner, be somewhat 
assisted by a knowledge of anatomy, for patient study must 
be his dependence, and not a mere reliance on taste. A 
susceptibility of pleasure at sight of a work of art, consti- 
tuting taste, is popularly supposed to be a sixth sense, and 
it has been satirically said that every man believes himself 
to be possessed of it. This, after all, is not surprising. A 
man will readily acknowledge ignorance of what it obvi- 
ously requires time and labor to acquire, but not to possess 
an inborn sense of taste would be to renounce a birthright 
and to take rank with the outcasts of Nature! Vanity is 
perhaps at the bottom of it all: 
“ Some demon whispers ‘ Strephon, have a taste.’ ” 6 
ANATOMY AND AIIT. 
Whether in art or literature, cultivation of the critical 
faculty demands long study, close observation, and famil- 
iarity with the best masters. It is not to the point to say 
that the critic cannot paint the picture, carve the statue, 
build the temple, or write the poem. If he could, there 
would be an end of criticism, and the world would be more 
full than now of crudities in art. 
It may be boldly said that a close study of the anatomy in 
a great work of art is a part of a fundamental error in art 
criticism, namely, the too minute consideration of the pro- 
cess of production rather than the appreciation of the life 
and harmony of the whole. The technique, must not deprive 
us of the artistic illusion. It is in archaic art that we are 
impressed with the building up of the body. Flexibility is 
wanting, and it is in high art only that we find dynamics 
in place of statics. 
The influence of anatomy is of more importance to sculp- 
ture than to painting. In the latter a surface only is pre- 
sented, while in a statue the whole figure must be displayed. 
Clothing, which exhibits the most exquisite effects of the 
painter’s art, is stiff and ungainly in the dull marble, and 
has always been discarded as much as possible by the sculp- 
tor. Herr Teufelsdrockh could never have thought out his 
philosophy of clothes in a gallery of sculpture. 
Artistic anatomy in a master hand greatly assists the 
understanding of the story intended to be portrayed. It 
was said of a very famous picture that there was a story in 
every joint of the fingers of the principal figure. If a story 
is to be told, however, it should be recounted in poetry or 
prose. It lias been shrewdly observed that if the famous 
Angelus of Millet were to be looked at hundreds of years 
hence, when church bells had long since been disused and 
were forgotten—if that blessed time should ever arrive—no 
comprehension of the meaning of the painting would be 
possible. 
It is a noteworthy fact that the most persistent advocates 
of the essentialness of anatomy to art speak only, as a rule ANATOMY AND ART. 
7 
of the human figure, and yet the argument must apply 
equally to animals. Can we suppose that either of the 
three Rhodian sculptors ever dissected a python to enable 
him to carve the graceful folds of the two mighty serpents 
which are crushing the agonized Laocoon and his two hap- 
less sons? Did Barye obtain his knowledge of the muscu- 
lature of the tigers and elephants of his wonderful groups 
from the dissecting table? Look at Meissonier’s famous 
painting of the Portrait of the Sergeant. The dog who is 
looking up at the martial pose of the soldier with such a 
diverting expression of wonder is a mere mass of wiry hair, 
with hardly a suggestion of bone or muscle. External 
form only is visible. A study of the works of the great 
animal painters and sculptors will show the impossibility 
of dissection having been a prerequisite to their art. 
A famous statuary, whose horses are especially admirable, 
tells me that he never knew an artist much given to the 
study of anatomy who did not spoil his work by over- 
minute anatomical detail. On the other hand, he observed, 
a certain knowledge of the anatomy of the horse from draw- 
ings or models is desirable, or the artist may copy a wind- 
gall for a muscle ! 
Euskin, in his lecture on the relation of art to organized 
form, with some exaggeration pronounces anatomy to be 
not only useless to the artist, but to be a positive injury. 
He instances the works of Albert Dtirer, whose knowledge 
of anatomy was so minute and extensive that he was never 
able to produce a beautiful human face; the bones, of which 
he knew too much, were in his way. 
There is nothing to indicate that oriental nations, or 
the ancient Greeks, knew anything of muscular anatomy, 
except from external form. Their warlike pursuits made 
them well acquainted with the viscera through the effect of 
wounds. The names of organs and regions of the body 
mentioned by Homer, and which have mostly come down 
to us through Hippocratic writers, number over one'hun- 
dred and forty according to Daremberg, and many of them 8 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
are the accepted technical terras in present use. In the 
Vegas such allusions are common, but generally absurd. 
In ancient Egyptian art the human figure is very defective. 
Quite lately, however (October, 1894), a statuette of very 
dark hard wood, which was discovered in the Therapeum 
at Karnak, has been deposited in the Louvre. It has been 
ascertained that it represents a priestess of Ammon, named 
Tou'ie, who lived some 3,500 years ago. The figure is that 
of a Nubian girl, and is exquisite in its proportions. In 
anatomical correctness it is equal to the famous “Crouching 
Scribe” in the same collection, which belonged to the fifth 
dynasty and is, therefore, between five and six thousand 
years old. It would be interesting to know the history of 
these rare exceptions. There was a law in ancient Thebes, 
it is said, by which the artist who produced a sculpture-por- 
trait worse looking than the original was heavily fined. 
The temptation to beautify the latter must have been great, 
but the marble does not admit of as much flattery as the 
canvas. 
In early Assyrian art the anatomy of the human figures 
portrayed is invariably bad, but the curious anomaly exists 
that sculptures of animals are frequently spirited and cor- 
rect. Why the power of imitating, so excellent in the one 
case should so fail in the other, does not seem to admit of 
explanation. 
It is nearly certain that Hippocrates never dissected a 
human body, and the extensive investigations of Aristotle 
were confined to animals, birds, and fishes. The practical 
study of human anatomy may be said to have arisen in 
Egypt under Ptolemy Sotor, and Ilerophilus and Erasis- 
tratus were permitted to dissect bodies. Their writings are 
lost, and it is through Galen and Celsus that their names 
and some notices of their work have been preserved. 
To Galen must be given the great praise of having 
brought together all that was known in his day on anatomy, 
and of having added an immense number of observations 
of his own. Nevertheless, it is admitted by the best critics ANATOMY AND ART. 
9 
that Galen probably never dissected a human body. His 
descriptions have been followed with painful minuteness by 
Daremberg, and the conclusion is irresistible that most, if 
not all, of his dissections were made upon monkeys. Galen’s 
name was most authoritative in all matters of anatomy and 
physiology for many centuries, and the blind reverence of 
his disciples was exemplified in the reply of Silvius when 
being forced to admit the inaccuracy of one of Galen’s de- 
scriptions, he said that “ Man had changed and not for the 
better.” 
Art was far in advance of medicine. The noble works of 
Pheidias and his contemporaries or successors were in ex- 
istence long before the time when Hippocrates began the 
work of rescuing medicine from the priests and made a first 
imperfect sketch of anatomy. For many ages after him 
anatomy was, in the words of a clever writer, “traditional 
and, in great part, fictitious; physiology little more than a 
farrago of crude conceits and baseless dogma; medicine a 
dismal combination of empiricism, superstition, and filthy 
charlatanism, tinged with a slight infusion of the black 
art.” * 
It is probable that the oldest anatomical drawings known 
to exist are to be found in a Persian manuscript. It is a 
treatise on anatomy by Mansour-ben-Ahmed ; it is dedi- 
cated to Mirza pir Mohammed, a grandson of the famous 
Tamerlane, and who died in the year 800 of the Hegira, or 
1406 of our era. There are six figures, of which one is a 
skeleton, having five false ribs on the right side and only 
four on the left—in verification, no doubt, of the story of 
the birth of Eve, for early Persian literature has frequent 
allusions to Moses and the writings ascribed to him. An- 
other figure lias the chest well opened, displaying the heart 
and lungs. This was a favorite subject for drawing with the 
early anatomists. The compactness, contrast of color, and 
importance of these organs made them especially fit to copy. 
♦Art in its relation to medical science. William Anderson. St. Thomas 
Hosp. Rep., n. s., XV, 1886, 151-181. 10 
ANATOMY ANT) ART. 
There is a relation of anatomy to art which is seldom re- 
ferred to in didactic treatises, and that is the true delinea- 
tion of deformity. Nature is never inconsistent, but is har- 
monious even in deformity. “For example,” says Diderot, 
“a wry nose is natural, if it does not offend us; we are led 
up to the deformity by little adjacent alterations, which tone 
it down and belong to it. But twist the nose of the Anti- 
nous, leaving the rest of the face unchanged, and you have 
an unnatural effect. The Antinous will not have a wry 
nose, but a broken nose.” An example of another kind of 
incongruity is to be seen in a picture by Burne Jones, where 
solemn faces, which remind one of Fra Angelico’s “em- 
bodied eestacies,” are joined to the bodies of joyous young 
bathers. 
The anatomical modifications produced by deformity or 
disease, and which are so admirably displayed in many of 
the paintings of the old masters, have been the subject of 
an able essay by the late Professor Charcot. He shows that 
photographs of convulsionists and hysterical epileptics 
strikingly recall the representations of those “possessed of 
devils.” The earliest known drawings of an exclusively 
pathological character are found, strange to say, in a Japan- 
ese manuscript of the twelfth century, a copy of which is in 
the British Museum. * Various forms of disease of the skin 
are very well represented, and would seem to have been 
drawn from life. The most noteworthy figure is that of a 
man whose mouth appears to be obliterated, and who is in- 
troducing food through an aperture in the region of the stom- 
ach. A gastric fistula, the result of accident, as in the well- 
known case of Alexis St. Martin, or produced artificially in 
cases of stricture of the upper part of the alimentary tube, 
or for the sake of observing the process of digestion in the 
laboratory, is supposed to belong to the present century. So 
here is again an opportunity for moralizing! 
Very few remains relating to anatomical art have been 
discovered of Roman origin. A marble figure of great in- 
* Anderson. ANATOMY AND ART. 
11 
terest was dug up in Rome in the grounds of the Villa of 
Musa, who was physician to the Emperor Augustus. It is a 
human torso, but the front of the chest and abdomen has 
been removed so as to expose the viscera. The heart is sit- 
uated in the very center of the thorax, and is vertical in po- 
sition. It exactly corresponds to the heart described by 
Galen, but which we know was studied on the ape. The 
lungs have three lobes on the left and two on the right- 
The chest is human, but the contents simian. It is prob- 
able that this curious figure was constructed for teaching 
purposes, and the crudity of the carving would correspond 
to the time assigned to it, long before the appearance of 
Galen’s work. 
A huge gap has to be surmounted at a bound from the 
time of these relics of classic art to the period when the in- 
vention of printing gave a marvelous impetus to the study 
of anatomy. Some of the earliest sources of illustration for 
anatomical teaching were nielli. The beautiful work known 
as niello—an Italian word equivalent to the Latin niger, or 
black—was produced by melting a black amalgam into the 
etchings on a metal plate, generally silver, which was after- 
ward highly polished. The most delicate tracing that the 
instrument of the engraver could produce became perma- 
nently black and formed an exquisite contrast to the lus- 
trous silver which it adorned. “ Rubbings,” as we should 
term them, were obtained from nielli exhibiting nude fig- 
ures which were made use of by the early teachers to illus- 
trate their lessons on the form of the human body. 
With the invention of carving on wooden blocks and en- 
graving upon copper plates anatomical drawings began to 
assume book form. Among the earliest of which we have 
any knowledge are two quaint woodcuts in the Fasciculus 
Medicinse of John Ketam, a German physician, whose work 
was published in 1491. 
In the 14th and 15th centuries a lesson of anatomy on 
the cadaver was an event of such great rarity and impor- 
tance that it was announced throughout the university 12 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
where it was to take place, and lords and nobles, even, 
were invited to be present. A curious manuscript of the 
14th century, which belonged to Guy de Chauliac, a famous 
French surgeon, and which is preserved in the Library of 
the Academy of Medicine of Montpellier, gives a striking 
representation of such a lecture. Women, too, were present, 
a fact which may be comforting to some of my hearers. 
The limits of this address will not permit of a detailed 
description of the early crude production and the gradual 
improvement of anatomical woodcuts and engravings. I 
shall come at once to the great man who first in all the ages, 
discarding animals, dissected the whole human body itself, 
and made known his discoveries by masterly plates which 
excite admiration to this day. 
Andreas Vesal, or Vesalius, was born in 1513 or 1514, in 
Brussels. In his student days anatomy was taught in this 
wise: The professor sat in his rostrum with much dignity, 
reading from Galen, while his assistant, sometimes a barber 
surgeon, sometimes only a servant, armed with a razor, made 
incisions under the direction of his master. Dogs and pigs 
were the ordinary subjects for dissection. Human bodies 
were rarely obtained. Vesalius relates that he only saw 
three during the three years of his studies in Paris. Such 
an examination was almost limited to an inspection of the 
viscera, and there seems to have been no demonstration of 
the muscular system. 
When Vesalius became professor of anatomy and surgery 
at Padua his fame as a master of human anatomy attracted 
students from all parts of Europe. He had early discovered 
that Galen’s knowledge of anatomy was the result of the 
dissection of monkeys, which animals that writer had sup- 
posed to exactly resemble man. His bold announcement 
of the errors of the teacher so long held to be an infallible 
authority brought upon him severe animadversions from 
those who worshipped Galen and were, beside, jealous of the 
daring young innovator. 
Ilis great work was published at Basle, in 1543. It is be- 
lieved that Titian undertook the illustrations, and it is cer- ANATOMY AND ART. 
13 
tain that Titian’s pupil, Jean Calcar, executed the larger 
number of them. 
Passing by without comment many works on anatomy, 
more or less artistic, which were composed after the example 
of Vesalius, I come to the masterpiece of the 17th century. 
The finest work of art in the shape of anatomical copper- 
plate engraving ever produced is the superb folio of Godfrey 
Bidloo, published at Amsterdam in 1685. The drawings 
were made for him by the artist Gerard de Lairesse, and 
the engraving is worthy of the artist and the professor. 
Lairesse confined himself to a close delineation of his sub- 
ject, but a little of the old-time fancifulness is occasionally 
apparent, especially in two plates which are introductions 
to the osteology. In one of these a superb skeleton has just 
stepped out of a massive sarcophagus and holds aloft an 
hourglass with the air of one who discourses on the brevity 
of life. In the second plate the grim moralist is returning 
to his grave with a sardonic smile, as if he preferred his 
peaceful rest to the turbulent outside. 
And here is a convenient place to draw attention to the 
humorous displays of the early anatomists. Representa- 
tions of the bony emblem of mortality in fantastic positions 
or relations appear in quite ancient literature. The pres- 
ence of such a lugubrious guest at a feast or in places de- 
voted to pleasure is a curious usage derived, according to 
Herodotus, from the Egyptians. The expression “ a skele- 
ton at the feast” is proverbial,but it is inaccurate as regards 
its source. The word skeleios, in its original usage, meant a 
dead body—a dried-up corpse, a mummy—and it is most 
likely that at the feasts of the ancient Egyptians a mummy 
served as the memento mori. In the museum of the Vatican 
is a marble thorax which exhibits the ribs only, but very 
finely proportioned. It is thought that this was intended 
to serve a similar purpose. 
There was much sardonic humor in the old anatomists. 
In Valverde’s work is to be seen an ecorche who holds a 
knife in one hand, and with the other holds up the entire 14 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
skin of his body, which he gazes upon with looks of affec- 
tionate admiration. 
A skeleton moralizing, Hamlet fashion, over a skull is 
one of the drawings of Vesalius, who died in 1564, the very 
year of Shakespeare’s birth. 
The work of Charles Estienne, better known under his 
Latinized name of Stephanus, was published in 1545. It is 
a curious attempt to conjoin art and anatomy, generally in 
a fantastic manner. For example, the first of the plates 
illustrating the anatomy of the brain contains a kneeling 
figure supporting himself by a staff and obligingly present- 
ing his cranium for inspection. The scalp, which has been 
removed, is hanging on the branch of a tree, and upon 
another tree is suspended a framed table with the necessary 
description. In the next plate the skull-cap is hanging on 
the tree, and the surface of the brain is presented to view. 
Each following plate has a different landscape, and as sec- 
tion after section of the brain has been removed, the benevo- 
lent cadaver places himself in the most convenient position 
for the full enjoyment of the spectacle he offers. In the last 
plate, when all the brain has been taken away, half kneel- 
ing, half lying, but courteous to the last, he presents the 
bony base of his cranium to show that all is gone. The 
landscape is sympathetically conceived. The shattered 
trunk of a tree is near the figure and a ruined castle in the 
background. 
In Laurentius’ Anatomy, published in 1595, the climax 
of absurdity is reached, for a professor, demonstrating the 
anatomy of a body which lies before him, has the entire 
front of his own chest removed and thrown over his right 
shoulder, so as to exhibit the heart and lungs for the edifi- 
cation of his class. 
In one of the earliest illustrated books produced after the 
invention of printing, the famous Nuremberg Chronicle, 
published in 1493, there is a plate entitled Imago Mortis, the 
Image of Death. A manikin is playing on a flute while 
two skeletons and an ecorche are dancing. The invention 
of the manikin is ascribed to Fra Bartolomeo. ANATOMY AND ART. 
15 
This fantastic taste was common in the period of what 
lias been called the paganism of the Italian Renaissance. 
Everything was paganized. Christian names were con- 
verted into Latin. God, Christ, the Virgin, the angels, were 
described in the writings of the day under names which 
had belonged to the “kind old gods” of Olympus. Sanaz- 
zaro in his poem De partu Virginis not only invokes the 
muses of Helicon to celebrate the birth of Christ, but intro- 
duces the old pagan river-god Proteus, who announces the 
forthcoming event to the river-god of Jordan. 
In the quaint compositions known as the Dance of Death 
this peculiar humor, always associated with the moral lesson 
of the uncertainty of life, is curiously exhibited. There is 
a charming composition of Le Sueur which embodies the 
same moral. A young Epicurean, richly dressed, crowned 
with flowers, and brilliant with health, promenading through 
a delicious landscape, sees a tomb on which is the inscrip- 
tion Ipse Epicurus obiit—even Epicurus died. 
The attempt to teach artistic anatomy by models began 
at a very earty period. The most usual form was a figure 
from which the entire skin and underlying cellular tissue 
had been removed, so as to exhibit all the superficial mus- 
cles of the body. It was carved in marble or molded in 
plaster. We have no English word for it except the clumsy 
term of “ flayed figure,” so we still use the French word 
ecorche. These figures generally suggest the flaccid muscles 
of the dissecting table. Ecorches were made by Bandinelli, 
a contemporary of Michelangelo, by Tortebat, Bouchardon, 
Houdon, Salvage, and others. The figure most commonly 
seen in studios is the composition of Houdon. Alphonse 
Lami, a French statuary, about forty years since produced 
a new and very admirable one. It was a life-size figure 
known as Le becheur, and represented a man digging with 
a long-handled spade. Lami’s theory was to represent “a 
living man without his skin in a given action.” Another 
very excellent ecorche was made later by a young artist 
named Eugene Caudron. 16 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
Attempts have not been wanting to improve the melan- 
choly lay-figure of the studio. An ingenious method has 
lately been put forth by Dr. Eliza Mosher, which she calls a 
“posture model.” The vertebrae of an articulated skeleton 
are strung upon a lead pipe, through which runs a copper 
wire, to modify its flexibility. The spinal column thus pre- 
pared can be curved to represent any position of the body 
desired. 
It is told of a famous artist that upon entering his studio and 
finding his pupils busily engaged in drawing from an ecorche, 
he flung the plaster cast into the fireplace, saying, “If you 
want to paint muscles, look at the living figure with the skin 
on!” And yet the living model has its disappointments. 
How little there is of the heroic in the tired arm of the sup- 
posed warrior! Sir Charles Bell said that ropes are wanted 
to hold the model up while the picture is completed, and 
in Cheselden’s Anatomy there is a plate of an ecorche tied 
with ropes to the branches of a tree, to keep him in the po- 
sition needed to show his muscles. 
A subject in which anatomy is, to some extent, concerned 
is the much disputed one of idealism and transcendentalism 
in art. Cicero said that more beautiful images could be con- 
ceived in the mind than are seen by the eye, and a modern 
poet, in like vein, says: 
“ No true painter ever set on canvas 
All the glorious visions he conceived.” 
But no painter’s pencil or poet’s thought can do more than 
combine the visible and the remembered. The poet invented 
and the artist painted centaurs, fauns, satyrs, mermaids, and 
other fantastic creatures, but they were only combinations 
of the human with animal form. Marvelous skill was shown 
in giving the expression of the animal to the partially hu- 
man face. It is not the pointed ears, the budding horns, and 
goat’s legs alone which make the sylvan deity, but the leer- 
ing sensuality of the goatish face, inimitable as it seems to 
be by modern art, is the characteristic of Pan and his cohort. ANATOMY AND ART. 
17 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in a strong passage denying the pos- 
sibility of anything superhuman in art, ends thus: “ We are 
forced to confine our conceptions, even of heaven itself and 
its inhabitants, to what we see in this world.” He might 
have added that the inventions of Christian art may take 
rank in their absurdity with the grotesque monsters of 
classic lore. 
Ideal beauty on theoretic grounds reminds one of the end- 
less geometric schemes of human proportion. They produce 
an exact and symmetrical result, but as lifeless and unin- 
spiring as a composite photograph. The Grecian sculptor, 
ignorant of dissection, was master of the anatomy of form. 
He sought to attain the highest ideal beauty not by any 
fanciful theory, but by selecting the most perfect type of 
every feature or limb. 
The story may not be true that “ the statue which en- 
chants the world ” was really composed from “ the mingled 
beauties of exulting Greece,” but the principle involved is 
unquestionably correct. The sculptor Rinehart stated to a 
friend that his Clytie was the result of a study of twenty of 
the finest models in Rome. 
It is told of a young painter that before beginning to 
work he knelt down and prayed to be delivered from his 
model. His aim was to idealize, not to copy. And with 
the highest success of the artist in embodying his ideal 
comes to the beholder, after long gazing, an uneasy feeling 
of desire for something still loftier. “ The loveliest Madon- 
nas of Christian art,” said Ruskin, “ fall short of their due 
power if they do not make their beholders sick at heart to 
see the living Virgin.” 
There are some famous pictures which represent the teach- 
ing of anatomy, and in these the obligations of anatomy and 
art may be fairly considered to be reciprocal. 
Few persons can have visited The Hague without seeing 
and admiring Rembrandt’s pointing of “ The lesson of anat- 
omy.” It represents Professor Tulp, the friend and protector 
of the artist, demonstrating the muscles of the forearm before 18 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
bis class. The bright, intelligent faces of his auditors, the 
easy grace of the master, who with one hand is lifting the 
tendons and with the other is impressing upon his hearers 
the functions of the muscles, is a masterpiece of expression. 
Tulp’s name is hardly known now except to the student, 
but he will live in history as long as Rembrandt’s painting 
shall endure. It is not generally known that there is in 
existence a still finer painting by Rembrandt of a like sub- 
ject. The Tulp picture was produced when the artist was 
twenty years old. In his fiftieth year he painted a Lesson 
of Anatomy as given by Professor Deyman. This was lost 
sight of fora very long period, and it was only recently that 
it was discovered in London and secured for the Royal Mu- 
seum of Amsterdam. Unfortunately a large part of the 
painting had been destroyed by fire, and of the class only 
one figure remains, that of a youth with a fine face, dressed 
in the sombre garment set off by a long white collar char- 
acteristic of the period. He holds the skull-cap of the sub- 
ject in his hand. Of the professor nothing is left but the 
hands, which are extremely beautiful, and which hold two 
instruments in true surgical style, with which the mem- 
branes of the brain are being demonstrated. The cadaver 
is in a half sitting position for the convenience of the lec- 
turer, and there is in the face and attitude something of that 
grim half-consciousness which the olderanatomists delighted 
to represent. The body is foreshortened with daring skill, 
and what is left of this wonderful painting shows the great 
advancement which time had brought to the skill of the 
master. This fragmentary painting was discovered by Volk- 
rnaier, the biographer of the artist, who knew of its existence 
from Rembrandt’s papers. I have seen only one notice of it 
in print.* 
In the Royal Museum of Amsterdam a room has been 
dedicated to a collection of paintings of “Lessons of Anato- 
my,” by Dutch artists, extending from 1603 to 1758. This 
I:\uil rriaire. Les lemons d’anatomie et les peintres hollandais aux 
xvie et xviie siecles, [Paris] 1881. ANATOMY AND ART. 
19 
fragment of Rembrandt’s is the especial treasure of the col- 
lection. There are in all nine of these paintings. 
After this partial retrospect of the progress of artistic 
anatomy, and of the methods by which it has been taught, 
our first question occurs—Did anatomy aid early art? 
Early Greek art was most likely prehistoric. It has been 
surmised, and the surmise repeated as if it were a settled 
discovery, that it was during the Homeric period that the 
Venus of Melos, of the Medici, the Laocoon, the Niobe, and 
other masterpieces were produced. All this is very uncer- 
tain and very unimportant. It is sufficient for the present 
purpose to know that the age of Pheidias long preceded the 
first crude attempts to study human anatomy on dogs, pigs, 
and monkeys. If by anatomy be meant dissection, the 
question then answers itself. External form was seen in its 
perfection in the sunny climate of Greece. The open-air 
life, the free garments, the games of the arena, all tended to 
this end. Other things conspired to make the age of Pheid- 
ias especially favorable for the development of art. The 
gorgeous spoils of the defeated Persians supplied stores 
of gold and ivory for the chryselephantine statues, and the 
continued tribute for defense from the Grecian States under 
the rigorous rule of Pericles furnished ample resources for 
architectural and artistic work. Athens had been destroyed, 
and new temples and buildings were to be erected. These 
demanded the highest efforts of plastic art, whether in full 
or in semi-relief, for their adornment. It must not be sup- 
posed that Pheidias trusted only to his marvelous genius, 
lie was early trained in the school of Hegias, and later with 
his famous fellow-pupils, Myron and Polykleitos, in the 
school of the Argive sculptor, Ageladas. 
Another potent cause for the supremacy of art in that 
time was the intense love of beauty inherent in the Greek. 
“ I take the gods to witness,” are the words put in the mouth 
of a Grecian youth, “that 1 would rather have a fair body 
than a kingly crown.” 
It is to be observed that the male figure predominates in 20 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
Greek art. Wiuekelmann, of whom Madame de Stael said 
that he made himself pagan for the purpose of penetrating 
antiquity, says: “As it is confessedly the beauty of man 
which is to be conceived under the general idea, so I have 
observed that those who are observant of beauty only in 
women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of 
men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for 
beauty in art. To such persons the beauty of Greek art will 
ever seem wanting because its supreme beauty is rather male 
than female.” 
Winckelmann does not enter into the reasons for this 
preference for masculine figures, but the opportunity for 
superior development of the muscles, especially in martial 
or athletic postures, naturally explains it. The beauty of 
goddess or nymph in the marble fills the mind with admira- 
tion, but it is of a calm and placid nature. “ Greek sensu- 
ousness,” says Pater, “ does not fever the blood. It is shame- 
less and childlike.” To the Greek artist external form, in 
motion or in repose, was all the anatomy he could acquire 
or need. He found that “acuteness and fidelity of eye and 
obedience of hand brought precision; precision, proportion; 
proportion, beauty.”* 
Ifow many theories upon the nature of the beautiful have 
been written ! From Longinus to Ruskin and Spencer, where 
are now their followers? Who does not feel forced to say 
with Omar Khayyam : 
“I have heard great argument ' 
About it and about; but evermore 
Came out by the same door where in I went.” 
There are certain qualities which, from the anatomist’s 
point of view, are essential to beauty of form. The skele- 
ton, the foundation of the figure, though unseen, must be 
perfect, the long bones arched, and the joints not clumsy. 
The muscular system must be well developed in both sexes. 
Fat in moderation contributes to the roundness of outline, 
though its excess is fatal to ideal beauty. Last of all, the 
* Fuseli. ANATOMY AND ART. 
21 
skin, with its concomitants of color and hair, becomes the 
quintessence of form in its wonderful capacity of expression. 
A hundred years ago Diderot, the ablest art critic of his 
century, said: “A thousand painters have died without 
having comprehended flesh; a thousand others will die 
without comprehending it.” 
The glorious period of Grecian art is, to us, emphaticalW 
the age of sculpture. That it was equally famous for its 
paintings we know from history, but they have all long 
since perished. A beautiful specimen of what is thought to 
he a painting of those early days was discovered at Cortona. 
The peasant who dug it up had used the slab as a door to 
his oven. The painting consisted of an exquisite female 
face of the purest Grecian type. An enthusiastic critic, after 
dilating on its beauties, says: “It is a pagan face, and the 
Christian soul has never dawned in those eyes.” What the 
particular expression of the “ Christian soul dawning in the 
eyes” may be he prudently leaves unexplained. It was a 
touch beyond the reach of common sense. 
Leaving the consideration of the period of the master- 
pieces of Grecian sculpture, let us briefly consider what 
anatomy did for art at the time of the Italian Renaissance. 
Four names present themselves especially in this connection. 
Luca Signorelli (1442-1524) exhibited a remarkable knowl- 
edge of anatomy, from which it is known that Michelan- 
gelo greatly profited. Luca painted a noble picture repre- 
senting a man carrying a dead youth on his shoulders. Both 
figures were nude, and it is probable that the painting was 
made in a lazar-house, for at that time the hospital, the gal- 
lows, and the churchyard were the only schools of anatomy, 
or it may have had some allusion to a touching incident of 
Luca’s life. He had a favorite son, an extremely beautiful 
youth, who was one day brought home dead, having been 
slain in a duel. Luca carried him into his studio, removed 
the clothing, and tenderly washed the blood stains from the 
beautiful body. He arranged the light, and, with dry eyes 
and firm lips, remained hour after hour painting on his can- 22 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
vas the lovely youth, so ruthlessly torn away, before decay 
should touch him. There is no doubt of the authenticity 
of this story, but it is remarkable that in a Latin poem by 
Vincent Bourne a like action is attributed to Apelles. It is 
probable, however, that the name is used generically for a 
painter, and that the incident referred to is the one just re- 
lated. Cowper has translated the poem. One knows not 
which to marvel at the most, the devotion of the artist or 
the stoicism of the father. 
The exquisite taste of Leonardo da Vinci, the great prede- 
cessor of Michelangelo and Raphael, saved him from any 
obtrusive display of his knowledge of anatomy, which was, 
perhaps, unequalled in his day. The anatomical sketches 
by this master still preserved at Venice are masterly draw- 
ings of great accuracy. 
How Michelangelo obtained the knowledge of anatomy 
which he employed with such wonderful effect we do not 
know. Ilis sketches of the partially dissected body and of 
the skeleton are often incorrect, and it is probable that he 
trusted to his memory of what he had seen in the hospitals 
or graveyards. He rarely introduces any portion of land- 
scape. The human form was all to him. In one of his son- 
nets to Victoria Colonna he says: 
“Nor hath God deigned to show himself elsewhere 
More clearly than in human forms sublime; 
Which, since they image him, compels my love.” 
(Symonds’ translation.) 
It is an old saying “Ars est celare artem” It is art to con- 
ceal art. Anatomy should not be learnt to parade it. The 
muscles in some of Michelangelo’s figures are so enormously 
developed as to seem distorted. Quatremere de Quincy says 
of him that while he made his figures show the very life of 
motion as no other artist ever has done, none of them seem 
to be capable of thought or feeling. Physical strength in 
perfection in every posture there was, but a sombre expres- 
sion of face characterized them all. While there is some 
ground for this criticism, it is too general when applied to 23 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
all the works of this mightiest of the great masters. A fine 
illustration to the contrary is to be found in his famous 
Pieta. There is the Madonna with the dead Christ on her 
knees. Her small head, youthful face, large torso, and am- 
ple limbs are illustrations of Michelangelo’s conception of 
the heroic. The pathetic stillness and beauty of the relaxed 
dead body and the contrast to the vigorous form of the 
mother, with unspeakable woe in her face, is beyond de- 
scription. 
It would be a juster criticism to say that he was wanting 
in the especial characteristics of the art of Pheidias, sim- 
plicity and grace, or as Winckelmann admirably termed it, 
“ noble naivete and placid grandeur.” 
Probably the most striking example of Michelangelo’s 
knowledge of anatomy was displayed in the famous cartoon 
which he produced in rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci. lie 
selected as its subject an incident of the war between the 
Florentines and the Pisans. A number of Florentine sol- 
diers were bathing in the Arno when an alarm was sounded 
betokening the approach of the enemy. The men are seen 
rushing from the river to the bank and making desperate 
efforts to put on their clothing and armor. The muscles of 
the warriors are superbly displayed and are free from the 
exaggeration which is seen in some of Michelangelo’s colos- 
sal figures. The cartoon perished, but a copy fortunately 
survives of what, perhaps, was only a portion of the origi- 
nal drawing. 
The anatomical sketches of Raphael which are yet in 
existence show mostly, as might be expected, a masterly 
knowledge of external form. There is little of the robust 
musculature of his great contemporary in his works, but it 
is generally correct. 
As we leave the fascinating period of the Renaissance we 
come to the time when it was no longer necessary to study 
anatomy by stealth at the gallows foot or in the lazar-house. 
Time will not permit of an attempt to trace the effect of such 
studies further. Brief and discursive as this sketch has been, 
I shall venture to suggest certain conclusions from it. 24 
ANATOMY AND ART. 
That neither in ancient Egypt, the Orient, nor in ancient 
Greece did art obtain any assistance from human anatomy 
by dissection. That nevertheless the finest examples of sculp- 
ture of the human figure that the world has ever seen were 
produced in ancient Greece. 
That not until about the sixteenth century were such 
studies made possible, and that not until the time of Vesa- 
lius was there any thorough knowledge of human anatomy. 
That an acquaintance with muscular anatomy by dissec- 
tion, though to be recommended as useful, forms but a com- 
paratively unimportant part of artistic anatomy. That this 
latter must be the study of the external form of the living 
body in repose or in motion, with a profound observance of 
the modifications produced by sex, age, and race. 
That, in short, physiology, and to some extent external 
pathology, meaning by this latter term the effect of disease, 
wounds, and death upon the body, with a certain amount 
of study of the muscles by dissection, make up what should 
be understood by artistic anatomy, or, as I should prefer to 
term it, artistic morphology.