From the 1535 Venice edition of Berengar of Carpi’s Commentary on
Mondino.]
Sometimes the professor changes places with the reader at the desk. In
some later MSS. the teacher is figured as himself handling the body
and demonstrating to his pupil (Plate XXX _a_[132] and _b_[133]), but
there is evidence that the miniatures portraying this are the work of
artists unfamiliar with dissection and with the teaching of anatomy.
The study of anatomy had to contend with two great difficulties, want
of subjects for dissection, and faith in the written word.
Thus, at Bologna, where it was arranged that every medical student of
over two years’ standing should attend an _Anatomy_ once a year, no
less than twenty students were admitted to see the anatomy of each
man, and thirty to the anatomy of each woman.[134] This was all the
practical instruction received. Some other Universities had to be
content with the cadaver of a single criminal per annum for the whole
body of students.
In the _first_ period during which the human body was dissected in
Europe, the thirteenth century, a certain amount of progress was
certainly made, despite the rarity of subjects. The rebirth of learning
in the thirteenth century was not, however, as favourable to anatomical
progress as might have been hoped. Galen, indeed, ceased to be a mere
name, and the Latin translations of his text, or of its adumbra in
the writings of the Arabians, became ever more familiar. On the other
hand, with more authoritative texts in their hands, men were but the
more inclined to follow the evil scholastic way, and to trust rather
to the written words of the master than to the evidence of their own
senses. Thus it came about that the _second_ period, which covers the
fourteenth and most of the fifteenth century, was really stationary
so far as the first-hand knowledge of anatomy was concerned. With
the last decade of the fifteenth century, however, there opens a new
and _third_ period in the history of our subject. From that time
dates the true era of anatomical renaissance, which may be regarded as
continuing until the commencement of modern anatomy with the great work
of Vesalius in 1543.
[Illustration: Plate XXXI. From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345 at
CHANTILLY]
[Illustration: Plate XXXII. From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345 at
CHANTILLY]
We have said that throughout the second period, the formal
demonstrations based on the declaimed text of Galen or Avicenna or
Mondino were practically the sole opportunities afforded to either
teacher or pupil for the investigation of the minuter details of the
human frame. But in making this statement concerning the arrest of
anatomical progress, we must expressly exclude the products of the
mighty genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), whose anatomical
researches were without influence, and remained long unnoticed.[135]
We must also omit evidence gathered from the work of such early
Renaissance painters as Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-98) or Andrea del
Verrocchio (1435-88), for these pursued the study of anatomy in a
special field and with a special object.[136] Furthermore, there
are a number of artists of similar date of whose anatomical studies
we have no direct evidence, but who yet outlined the muscles of
the nude human figure in such a way as leads us to suppose that
they had investigated the superficial structures at least of flayed
parts. Such is the suggestion of some of the work of Luca Signorelli
(_c._ 1442–_c._ 1524), and of Andrea Mantegna (died 1506). With
such reservations, however, it is probably true that no evidence is
forthcoming until the last decade of the fifteenth century of any
advance from the standpoint of Mondino.[137]
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).
[Illustration: 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).
[Illustration: Fig. 7. A FEMALE FIGURE LAID OPEN TO SHOW THE WOMB AND
OTHER ORGANS
From the 1493 Venice edition of ‘Ketham’ translated into Italian. This
is the first printed anatomical figure drawn from the object.]
The second plate from the 1493 Ketham with which we are here concerned
is the outline of a female body, in a traditional pose,[151] laid open
to exhibit some of the internal organs (Fig. 7). These had clearly
been sketched from the object, and therefore this drawing, the first
printed figure of its kind, may be said to introduce the new era for
the investigation of the human frame. The anatomical renaissance had
begun. Into a discussion of the full development of that age we cannot
now enter. But the MS. of Manfredi, with which we have here to deal,
was written at the very dawn of the new era and is itself one of its
earliest documents.