But if descriptive anatomy developed slowly in the hands of the physicians, the art of graphic representation of anatomical structures was still more backward. Several groups of anatomical drawings of mediaeval date have come down to our time, but examination of them shows that they have been drawn without direct reference to the human frame. Some of these figures are of the crude type known as the ‘five-figure series’ (Plate [XXXIII]), mere traditional diagrammatic sketches.[138] Hardly better or more instructive are the series of dissections which illustrate certain MS. works of Henri de Mondeville (Plate [XXVIII a])[139] and Guido de Vigevano (Plates [XXXI] and [XXXII]), 1345.[140] A few sketches representing the separate organs have also survived (Fig. [6]),[141] but these never suggest that the draughtsman had before him the structure which he seeks to depict, and the drawings appear to have been made in order to illustrate contemporary physiological theory rather than observed anatomical fact. Even the magnificent illuminated Dresden Codex of Galen, prepared in France or Flanders as late as the second half of the fifteenth century, betrays not the slightest first-hand knowledge of anatomy.[142] Although the illustrations of this MS. are prepared with the utmost technical skill, they yet show us a teacher exhibiting to his pupils a heart of the form found on playing-cards, and other anatomical figures scarcely more faithful to the facts (Plate [XXXIV]).
Fig. 6. DIAGRAMS OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS
After Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 399 of about 1298, fos. 23 recto–24 recto.
The spirit of investigation of the artist who perforce went direct to nature, dissecting with his own hands and observing with his own eyes (Plate [XXXVI]), showed itself indeed far more fruitful than the tedious ex cathedra methodization of the professor.[143] Yet the system of the schools needed to be combined with the freedom of the artist for the production of an effective anatomical work. What the projected treatise of Marcantonio della Torre (1473–1506) might have been we may guess from the anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (Plate [XXXV]), who was to have been associated with him in the work.[144] In the event, however, the medical schools had to wait yet another generation before the subject was placed on a sound basis by André Vesale.
The Mondino pamphlet—for it is little more—used since its author’s death in 1327 as a text-book in the schools of northern Italy, was first printed in 1478. Not until the last decade of the fifteenth century did there appear another work bearing evidence of the hand of a practical anatomist. This was an Italian translation of Ketham’s Fasciculus medicinae, impressed at Venice in the year 1493.[145] The volume comprises Mondino’s pamphlet and a collection of other medical tracts that were probably put together by Giorgio di Monteferrato from the work of a writer of the previous century, for their contents are traceable to a fourteenth-century MS.[146] The text is neither original nor remarkable, but the Venice volume derives its importance from certain figures which appear in it for the first time.
Two of these plates are of great interest both intrinsically and also in relation to the history of anatomy. One of them is the magnificent representation of a dissection scene, which is regarded as perhaps the finest example of book illustration produced during the first century of typography[147] (Plate [XXVII]). This work of the ‘maître aux dauphins’, as the unknown artist is called by critics,[148] is doubly interesting, for it is the subject of an experiment in colour printing, no less than four pigments being laid on by means of stencils. As early as 1457 the method of stencilling was employed for colouring the initials of a Psalter, and in 1485 Erhard Ratdolt in an astronomical work added yellow to the earlier red and black. The figure from which our plate is taken represents, however, the first attempt at a complex colour scheme and leads up to the work of Hugo da Carpi.[149]
In this picture the professor, a youthful figure perhaps intended to represent Mondino himself, is shown standing at a desk which hides his book. Around a corpse, laid on a trestle table before him, there cluster a number of men in doctor’s robes. Their valid faces are sufficient to convince us that the artist is here presenting us with portraits. One of the listeners has removed his robe and stands with upturned sleeves and knife in hand, ready to make the first incision on the direction of the doctor, who points to the part with a wand held in the left hand. In the impression of 1495 and in those of later date, the book appears above the desk, the attitudes of the students are somewhat changed, and many other details are altered. In all these, however, the blocks have been recut and the result is artistically inferior[150] (Fig. [3]).
