Transcript The human body

Ideas and Identities
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519),
‘The Vitruvian Man’, drawing, c.
1487
The human body
Diego Velazquez, The Rokeby Venus, c.1647-51
The Rokeby Venus as reimagined by Anna Utopia Giordano
Peter Paul Rubens, Venus
at a Mirror, c. 1615
A ‘Rubenesque’ Dove
model
The perfect male body…?
Elle Macpherson, ‘The Body’
Jessica Alba, the perfectly-proportioned female face?...
…unlike Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (c.
1503-6), whose face, however,
some claim conforms to the
Golden Ratio (or Golden
Rectangle)?
The drawing is accompanied by notes to Vitruvius’s
De architectura (c.15 BCE), a Roman architectural
treatise, in which Vitruvius discusses proportion.
Examples of Leonardo’s notes on proportion:
‘Every man at the third year is half his height.’
‘The space from the middle of the nose to the
bottom of the chin is half the face.’
‘The space from the beginning of the top of the
nose where the eyebrows begin, to the bottom of
the chin is two thirds the face.’
‘From the roots of the hair to the top of the breast
is a sixth of a man’s height; and this measure never
varies.’
‘If you measure from the point of the ankle on the
inside to the end of the big toe, you will find that
this measure is as long as the whole hand.’
(Edward MacCurdy, ed. and trans., The notebooks
of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols (London, 1938), pp.
220-2.)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), ‘The
Vitruvian Man’, drawing, c.1487
Studies of proportion, by Leonardo;
drawings, c. 1490
Top left: the proportions of the leg and foot
Bottom left: the proportions of a standing,
kneeling and sitting man
Above: the proportions of the head
Illustrations to Albrecht Dürer, Four
books on human proportions (1528)
‘I hold that the perfection of form and
beauty is contained in the sum of all
men.’
Below: Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve,
1507
Michelangelo, David, 1501-4
(Accademia Gallery, Florence)
Below: anatomical drawings by
Michelangelo
Alberti on anatomical study
it will help, when painting living creatures, first to sketch in the bones, for, as
they bend very little indeed, they always occupy a certain determined
position. Then add the sinews and muscles, and finally clothe the bones and
muscles with flesh and skin. But at this point, I see, there will perhaps be
some who will raise as an objection something I said above, namely, that the
painter is not concerned with things that are not visible. They would be right
to do so, except that, just as for a clothed figure we first have to draw the
naked body beneath and then cover it with clothes, so in painting a nude the
bones and muscles must be arranged first, and then covered with appropriate
flesh and skin in such a way that it is not difficult to perceive the positions of
the muscles. As Nature clearly and openly reveals all these proportions, so
the zealous painter will find great profit from investigating them in Nature for
himself. Therefore, studious painters should apply themselves to this task,
and understand that the more care and labour they put into studying the
proportions of members, the more it helps them to fix in their minds the
things they have learned.
Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura [On painting] (1435), II.36 (trans. Cecil Grayson)
Leonardo, Anatomical study of the arm,
drawing, c.1510
Vital functions of the body
Cause of breathing.
Cause of the movement of the heart.
Cause of vomiting.
Cause of the food descending into the stomach.
Cause of the emptying of the intestines.
Cause of the movement of superfluous matter through the intestines.
Cause of swallowing.
Cause of coughing.
Cause of yawning.
Cause of sneezing.
Cause of the numbness of various limbs.
Cause of loss of sensation in any limb.
Cause of the tickling sensation.
Cause of sensuality and other necessities of the body.
Cause of urination.
And so of all the natural actions of the body.
Edward MacCurdy, ed. and trans., The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols (London,
1938), pp. 118-19.
Leonardo, The foetus, and the muscles attached to the pelvis (left), and
the foetus in the womb (right), drawings, c. 1511
Leonardo, The heart, bronchi and
bronchial vessels of an ox,
drawing, c. 1511-13
Whether air penetrates into the heart or not
To me it seems impossible that any air can
penetrate into the heart through the trachea
[i.e. bronchi], because if one inflates [the lung],
no part of the air escapes from any part of it.
And this occurs because of the dense
membrane with which the entire ramification
of the trachea is clothed. This ramification of
the trachea as it goes on divides into the most
minute branches together with the most
minute ramification of the veins which
accompany them in continuous contact right to
the ends. It is not here that the enclosed air is
breathed out through the fine branches of the
trachea and penetrates through the pores of
the smallest branches of these veins. But
concerning this I shall not affirm my first
statement until I have seen the dissection
which I have in hand.
Ancient medicine
Hippocrates (c.460/459-c.370
BCE), and Hippocratic Corpus,
a collection of about sixty
medical treatises ascribed to
Hippocrates (most were
almost certainly not written
by him)
Galen (129-c.200 CE),
physician and medical writer
from Pergamon
Galen and Hippocrates; 12th-century
mural painting from Anagni, Italy
Title-page of edition of Hippocrates
and Galen, 1639
Humoural theory, and the four humours
Black bile—melancholic—earth (cold, dry)
Phlegm—phlegmatic—water (cold, wet)
Yellow bile—choleric—air (hot, wet)
Blood—sanguine—fire (hot, dry)
Galen on the choleric temperament:
‘The pulse is hard, big, rapid, and frequent,
and breathing is deep, rapid and frequent… Of
all people, these have the hairiest chest… they
are ready for action, courageous, quick, wild,
savage, rash, and impudent. They have a
tyrannical character, for they are quick
tempered and hard to appease.’ (Ars medica,
11)
Engraved title-page to Septem
planetae (1581), depicting
personifications of the four humours;
engraving by Gerard de Jode
The four humours, from a 1472
manuscript; clockwise from top
left: blood (sanguine), phlegm
(phlegmatic), black bile
(melancholic), yellow bile
(choleric)
Melancholy and Phlegmatic, from The foure complexions, set of four engravings by
William Marshall published in the 1630s
Sanguine and Cholerick, from The foure complexions, 1630s
Woodcut illustration from Johann
Kaspar Lavater, Physiognomische
Fragmente zur Beförderung der
Menschenkenntnis und
Menschenliebe (1775-8)
Medieval illustration of a
physician letting blood from a
patient
Bloodletting on an ancient
Greek vase
Points for bloodletting; woodcut
illustration to Hans von Gersdorff,
Feldbuch der Wundarzney (Fieldbook
of surgery), 1519
Late thirteenth-century illustration of
the venous system
‘The Wound Man’; medieval
anatomical illustration showing all
the wounds a human body can
sustain
Illustration to Hans von Gersdorff,
Feldbuch der Wundarzney
(Fieldbook of surgery), 1519
Post-mortem examination, illustration to manuscript,
c.1300
Illustrations to Guy de Chauliac, Grande chirurgie, 1363; on left, lesson in
dissection at the University of Montpellier
Portrait of Paracelsus (Theophrastus
Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541),
mystical physician, alchemist, astrologer
and occultist; portrait by Quentin Metsys
These are the qualifications of a good
surgeon:
A clear conscience, desire to learn and to
gather experience, a gentle heart and
cheerful spirit.
He must not be married to a bigot.
He should not be a runaway monk.
He should not practise self-abuse.
He must not have a red beard.
(from Jolande, Jacobi (ed.), Paracelsus:
Selected writings, pp. 52-3.)
Microcosm and macrocosm;
illustration to Robert Fludd,
Utriusque cosmi, maioris
scilicet et minoris,
metaphysica, physica, atque
technica historia, c.1619
The signs of the zodiac and the parts of the
body they govern; illustration to Gregor
Reisch, Margarita philosophica (1503)
The New York Farmer’s Almanac, 1818
Gregor Reisch, Margarita philosophica,
1508 edn
Anatomy lesson, from Joannes de
Ketham, Fasciculus medicie (Venice,
1522)
Andreas Vesalius (1514-64), Flemish
anatomist and physician, chair of
surgery at the University of Padua, and
imperial physician to Charles V;
illustration showing Vesalius from his
De humani corporis fabrica (1543)
Title-page to Andreas Vesalius, De
humani corporis fabrica (Basle,1543; 2nd
edn, Basle, 1555)
Detail from the title-page to Vesalius, De humani
corporis fabrica (1543)
Vesalius on illustration
How much pictures aid the understanding of
these things and place a subject before the eyes
more precisely than the most explicit language,
no one knows who has not had this experience
in geometry and other branches of
mathematics.
(from the preface to De humani corporis fabrica)
Illustrations to Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica
Illustrations to Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica
Leonardo, The hemisection of a man
and woman in the act of coition,
drawing, c. 1490-2
Vesalius on the heart
‘The septum is formed from the very densest substance of the heart. It abounds
on both sides with pits. Of these none, so far as the senses can perceive,
penetrate from the right to the left ventricle. We wonder at the art of the
Creator which causes blood to pass from right to left ventricle through invisible
pores.’ (from first edn of De fabrica, 1543)
‘Not long ago I would not have dared to turn aside even a hair’s breadth from
Galen. But it seems to me that the septum of the heart is as thick, dense and
compact as the rest of the heart. I do not see, therefore, how even the smallest
particle can be transferred from the right to the left ventricle through the
septum.’ (from second edn of De fabrica, 1555)
‘I surely deserved something better than the slander of those who are so
furiously aroused against me because their studies have not been so successful,
because I don’t accept Galen, and because I refuse to disbelieve my eyes and
reason for his sake.’ (from second edn of De fabrica, 1555)
William Harvey (1578-1657)
‘I profess to learn and teach anatomy not
from books but from dissections, not from
the positions of philosophers but from the
fabric of nature.’
Illustration from Harvey’s Exercitatio anatomica de
motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (An
anatomical exercise on the motion of the heart and
blood in living beings) (1628), showing an
experiment, with the use of a ligature, demonstrating
that venal blood flows only towards the heart;
Harvey was presenting his findings in lectures from
1616
Julien Offray De La Mettrie (1709-51), French
physician and philosopher, author of L’Homme
machine (1747)
‘Let us conclude boldly then that man is a machine,
and that in the whole universe there is but a single
substance with various modifications.’
Kraftwerk, The ManMachine, 1978
Mecha Pin-Up, by Fernando
Vicente
Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as
Industrial Palace), by Fritz Kahn, 1926
Leiden anatomy theatre; illustration from c.1640
Anatomy lesson at Leiden; engraving from c.1597
Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1632
Poster for Saw, 2004
German poster for David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, 1988
Still from David Cronenberg’s
Videodrome, 1983
Plastinated corpses from Gunther
von Hagens’ exhibition, Body
Worlds