Dissertation, School of Art History (
2014)
Copy
BIBTEX
Abstract
Vesalius wrote nothing about the aesthetics of the anatomical illustrations
found in his De humani corporis fabrica (1543). There are, however, two
passages in this work that offer a starting point for an investigation into the
illustration’s idealised style. In discussing the body that is best for a public
dissection Vesalius says that it must be one that resembles the ‘Canon of
Polycleitus’, and later, he refers to his pursuit of the historia absoluti hominis
or historia of the perfect man. These two passage lie at the heart of a solution
to questions concerning the style of Vesalius’s illustrations.
This thesis seeks to investigate the role that visual material (art) played in
determining the visual character of Vesalius’s natural philosophical
illustrations. In antiquity art and nature were generally thought to be opposed.
This distinction was undermined in the sixteenth century as images came to
play a role in acquiring and conveying knowledge about the natural world. The
role that art played in determining the visual character of Vesalius’s
illustrations, I argue, constitutes another facet of the undermining of the
ancient opposition between art and nature that occurred in the sixteenth
century. The relationship between art and nature forms the basis of my
investigation into the style of Vesalius’s illustrations.
I examine three separate but interrelated avenues which, I suggest, played a
role in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. The first derives from
the history of natural philosophy and medicine. I suggest that the concepts art,
nature, teleology, form and beauty as they are found in Plato’s Timaeus, and
Marsilio Ficino’s sixteenthcentury commentary on that work, provide an
epistemology and account of the body that is also found in Galen’s On the
Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, and subsequently reflected in both the text
and illustrations of the Fabrica. This epistemological underpinning is entirely in
keeping with the method of proportional representation of the body and
associated aesthetic advocated in Polycleitus’s Canon.
The second avenue concerns the role that both ancient and Renaissance
artworks played in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. While the
illustrations embody the ideal and typical form advocated in the Canon they
also embellish this, and contain stylistic features derived from Hellenistic
sculpture and found in High Renaissance art. I argue for specific parallels
between Hellenistic sculpture, Michelangelo’s nudes in his Sistine Chapel
frescos and Vesalius’s illustrations.
Thirdly, I consider Renaissance artwriting and aesthetics as a source for
understanding the idealised style of the Vesalian illustrations. In particular I
examine Leon Battista Alberti’s tabulation of the ideal man and his aesthetic
principle concinnitas. This offers a Renaissance account of beauty and the ideal
that is analogous to the Canon of Polycleitus, is central to an understanding of
Italian Renaissance art and aesthetics, and has a particular application to
Vesalius’s illustrations and their teleological underpinnings. I suggest that
contrapposto asthe expression of antithesis in art offers a theoretic parallel for
the augmentation of the austere classical style found in Vesalius’s own use of
contrapposto and his interest in musculature and movement.
Throughout, this thesis is concerned with relationships between visual
materials. I elaborate on this theme through an investigation of the influence
that Vesalius’s illustrations had on a selection of anatomical illustrations that
came in its wake. I construe the relationships that obtain between these
illustrations as analogous to those which occur in what are termed art
historical ‘movements’.