INTRODUCTION.
Anatomy in general; the anatomy of the external forms of man;
physiology of the same.--Origin of the knowledge of the Greek
artists of the anatomy of external forms; the influence of
gymnastics upon Greek art.--The Renaissance and anatomical
study: Mondino di Luzzi (1316).--The anatomical studies of
Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raphael.--Titian
and Andreas Vesalius.--The anatomical course of the School
of Painting (1648).--What the artist requires in the study
of anatomy: proportions, forms (or contours), attitudes,
movements.--The order of these studies; divisions of the subject.
Anatomy, as the derivation of the word indicates (from _ἀνὰ_, across,
and _τομὴ_, section), is the study of the parts composing the
body--muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, various viscera, &c.--parts
which we separate one from the other by dissection, in order to examine
their shapes and their relations and connections.
This study may be accomplished in various ways: (1) from a
philosophical and comparative point of view, by seeking the analogies
and differences that the organs present in animals of different
species--which is called _Comparative Anatomy_; (2) from a practical
point of view, by seeking out the arrangement of organs, the knowledge
of which is indispensable to the physician and surgeon--this is called
_Surgical_ or _Topographical Anatomy_; (3) by examining the nature and
arrangement of the organs which determine the external forms of the
body--this is _Plastic Anatomy_, called also the _Anatomy of External
Forms_, the _Anatomy of Artists_. It is the anatomy of external forms
that we shall study here; but the artist ought to know not only the
form of the body in repose, or in the dead subject, but also the
principal changes of form in the body when in a state of activity,
of movement, and of function, and should understand the causes which
determine these changes. Plastic anatomy ought to be supplemented by
a certain amount of knowledge of the functions of the organs, _e.g._,
muscles and articulations; so that under the title of anatomy of the
external forms of man we shall study at the same time the anatomy and
the physiology of the organs which determine these forms. We should be
contending for what has been long since conceded, were we to endeavour
to show to what an extent the studies of anatomy and physiology are
indispensable to the artist, who seeks to represent the human form
under many and various types of action. Nevertheless, it may be useful
to explain how the _chefs-d’œuvre_ of ancient art have been produced
with admirable anatomical exactness by men who certainly had not gone
through any anatomical studies, and to show what special conditions
aided them to acquire, by constant practice, the knowledge that we are
obliged to seek day by day in the study of anatomy.
The Greek sculptors have reproduced the human form with marvellous
anatomical exactness; in fact, the works of Phidias (the _Theseus_
and the _Ilissus_), those of Myron (the _Discobolus_), those of
Lysippus and of Praxiteles (the _Sleeping Fawn_), those of Agasias
(the _Fighting Gladiator_), and other masterpieces given as models
in all the schools of art, are such that it is impossible to find
fault with them, or to discover in them the least inexactitude, either
from an anatomical or a physiological point of view;[3] in fact, not
only are the muscles, for example, prominent exactly in their places,
but, more than that, these prominences are differently accentuated
in corresponding muscles on the different sides, according to the
nature of the movement; one side will present the muscles swelled
up in a state of contraction, or the muscles may be in repose--that
is, relaxed and relatively flattened. At the time when these works
of art were produced, the study of anatomy, or even the dissection
of the human body, had not yet been attempted; the respect in which
the dead body was held was such that the physicians themselves, who
should have been able to justify their motives for this study, had
never as yet dissected a human body. In order to supply this want of
direct knowledge Hippocrates had dissected animals, and had arrived
at certain conclusions by the analogy that exists between the organs
of quadrupeds and those in man. Galen himself dissected monkeys
only, seeking to confine his examination to animals whose anatomical
construction might be considered as most closely resembling that of
man. Galen never possessed a human skeleton, for in a passage in his
anatomical works he states the pleasure that he found in studying
at last some human bones that had been deposited in a marshy place
by a river which had overflowed its banks. We seem, then, to have a
singular contradiction between these two facts, as we know on the one
hand that the Greek artists have shown in their works a most rigorous
anatomical exactitude, whilst on the other hand neither they nor their
contemporary physicians and surgeons had made a study of the anatomy of
man by the practice of dissection.
But this contradiction disappears altogether when we examine the
conditions which permitted those artists to have constantly before
their eyes the nude human body, living and in motion, and so set them
to work to analyse the forms, and thus to acquire, by the observation
of the mechanism of active muscular changes, a knowledge almost as
precise as that which is now obtained by the accurate study of anatomy
and physiology. It is sufficient, in fact, to recall to mind the
extreme care the ancients gave to the development of strength, and of
physical beauty, by gymnastic exercises. In Homer we see the heroes
exercising themselves in racing, in quoit-throwing, and in wrestling;
later we come to the exercise of the athletes who trained themselves to
carry off the palm in the Olympic games; and it is evident, in spite
of the ideas that we hold now respecting wrestlers and acrobats, that
the profession of an athlete was considered a glorious one, as being
one which not only produced a condition of physical beauty and high
character, but constituted in itself a true nobility. Thus the life
of the gymnast came to exercise a decisive influence on Greek art.
The prize of the conqueror in the Olympic games was a palm, a crown
of leaves, an artistic vase; but the chief glory of all was that the
statue of the victor was sculptured by the most celebrated artist of
the time. Thus Phidias produced the handsome form of Pantarces, and
these athletic statues form almost the only archives of the Olympiads,
upon which Emeric David was able to reconstruct his Greek Chronology.
From these works, which became ideals of strength and beauty, the
artist had long been able to study his model, which he saw naked
every day, not only before his exercises, whilst rubbing himself over
with oil, but during the race, or the leaping match, which showed the
muscles of the inferior extremities, or during the throwing of the
quoit, which made the contractions of the muscular masses of the arm
and the shoulder prominent; and during the wrestling matches, which
from the infinite varieties of effort, successively brought all the
muscular powers into play. Was it then surprising that the images
of the gods, destitute of movement and of life, which had so long
satisfied the religious sentiment of the people, were succeeded by
artistic representations of man in action in statues such as could
embody the idea of strength and beauty, studies of the living statues
of the gymnasium? Further, we shall see the decline of art proceed side
by side with the abandonment of the exercises of the gymnasium. Much
later, in the Middle Ages, art awoke and embodied ideas in figures
without strength and life indeed, but which nevertheless express in a
marvellous manner the mysterious aspirations of the period; but these
have not anything in common with the realistic representation of the
human form, well developed and active, as seen in Greek art. At the
time of the Renaissance, artists not having any longer a living source
of study in athletic sports, recognised the necessity of seeking for
more precise knowledge in the _anatomical_ study of the human
body, in addition to the inspiration drawn from the study of the
antique, and thus we see that the revival of the plastic arts occurred
simultaneously with the introduction of the practice of dissection.
This was not brought about without some difficulty.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.
Reproduction of a drawing of an anatomical study by Leonardo da
Vinci. (Choulant’s work, page 8.) This design represents the
minute dissection of the muscles of the lateral region of the
neck and trunk.]
In the year 1230, Frederic II., Emperor of Germany, and King of the Two
Sicilies, passed a law prohibiting the practice of medicine without
the practitioners having first studied the anatomy of the human body.
In spite of two papal excommunications hurled against the author of
this edict, dissections were henceforth regularly pursued in Italy;
and one century later--in the year 1316--Mondino di Luzzi was able to
write the first treatise on human anatomy, containing descriptions
made from studies of the dead body. This treatise was printed in 1478.
Artists rivalled physicians in the ardour with which they pursued
their anatomical studies; and it may be said that all the painters
and sculptors in the fifteenth century gave most careful attention to
dissection, or at least studied demonstrations made upon the dead body,
for all have left, amongst their drawings, studies that leave no doubt
on this head. Among the great masters it may be noted that Leonardo
da Vinci (14521519) left thirteen portfolios of various drawings and
studies, among which are numerous anatomical studies of remarkable
fidelity. The greater number of these were taken from Milan by the
French in 1796, and afterwards they were in part restored to Italy;
some of them, however, went to enrich the British Museum in London,
and were published by Chamberlain.[4] In Fig. 1 is reproduced one
of these anatomical drawings. It shows with what care--perhaps with
over-scrupulous care--the illustrious master endeavoured to separate
by dissection the various fasciculi of pectoral muscle, deltoid, and
sterno-cleido-mastoid. It may be noted also that in his _Treatise
on Painting_, Leonardo da Vinci devotes numerous chapters to the
description of the muscles of the body, the joints of the limbs and
of the “cords and small tendons which meet together when the muscles
contract to produce its action,” &c.; and finally, in this same
_Treatise on Painting_, he makes allusion at different times to a
_Treatise on Anatomy_, which he intended to publish, and for which he
had gathered together numerous notes. These are fortunately preserved
in the Royal Library at Windsor.
Michael Angelo also (1475–1564) made at Florence many laborious studies
of dissection, and left among his drawings beautiful illustrations
of anatomy, of which several have been published in Choulant’s work,
and by Seroux d’Agincourt.[5] Finally, we have numerous drawings by
Raphael himself, as proof of his anatomical researches, among which we
ought to mention, as particularly remarkable, a study of the skeleton
intended to give him the exact indication of the direction of the limbs
and the position of the joints for a figure of the swooning Virgin
in his painting of the Entombment (Choulant, p. 15). We cannot end
this short enumeration without quoting further the names of Titian
and Andreas Vesalius, in order to show into what intimate relations
artists and anatomists were brought by their common studies. Titian,
in fact, is considered the real author of the admirable figures which
illustrate the work--“De Humani Corporis Fabrica”--of the immortal
anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, justly styled the restorer of anatomy. It
is necessary, however, to add that though some of the drawings are by
Titian, the greater number were executed by his pupil, Jan van Calcker,
as is pointed out in the preface to the edition of the work published
at Basle in 1543.
The renaissance of the plastic arts and that of anatomy were therefore
simultaneous, and closely bound up one with the other; ever since
that time it has been generally recognised that it is necessary to
get by anatomical study that knowledge of form which the Greeks
found themselves able to embody in consequence of the opportunities
they had of studying the human figure in the incessant exercises of
the gymnasium. Again, in 1648, when Louis XIV. founded at Paris the
_Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture_, which later on took the title
of the _École des Beaux-Arts_, two sections of study were instituted
side by side with the studios properly so called, for imparting to the
pupils instruction considered as fundamental, and indispensable to the
practice of art. These were the sections of perspective and anatomy.
It is not our place to plead, otherwise than by the preceding
historical considerations, the cause of anatomy in its relation to
painting and sculpture; but we ought at least to examine what method
is likely to prove the most useful for its study. If each anatomical
detail does not correspond to an artistic need we are liable in
following any treatise written with other than an artistic aim to be
entangled in superfluous names and useless descriptions; while at the
same time we might neglect details which are to the artist of great
importance, although considered of secondary value by authors who have
written especially for students in medicine.
We ought, then, to ask ourselves, in the first place, what are the
ideas that the artist should seek for in his study of anatomy? To this
question all will reply that the ideas of proportion, of form, of
attitudes and movements are those in which anatomy is relied upon to
furnish precise rules; and as the expression of the emotions, either in
painting or sculpture, cannot be reproduced except by various changes
in the general attitude of the body, and in the special mechanism of
the physiognomy moved by the muscles, we must conclude that our study
should deal not only with proportions, form, attitudes and movements,
but also with the expression of the emotions and passions. This, then,
is the object to be attained. Suppose we try to accomplish it by
examining in a first series of studies all that belongs to proportions;
afterwards, in a second series, all that has relation to form; in a
third, attitudes, &c. Such an order of proceeding, logical though
it be, will have the disadvantage of causing numerous repetitions,
and the more serious inconvenience of artificially separating parts
which in the structure of the body are intimately connected. Thus,
form is determined sometimes by osseous prominences, sometimes by
the soft parts, which may be muscular or tendinous. Attitudes are
determined by the muscles; but these are subject to laws which result
from the position and action of the joints; so with movements in the
expression of which it is necessary to consider, at the same time, what
the conformation of the osseous levers (the direction of the bones
and their articulation) allows, as well as that which the muscles
accomplish, also the direction of the muscles and the differences of
shape produced by their swelling and tension in action, as well as
when the antagonistic muscles are relaxed. Proportions themselves
cannot be defined without an exact knowledge of the skeleton, for it
is the bones alone which furnish us with the landmarks from which to
take measurements. A knowledge of the bones and of their articular
mechanism is indispensable to us, that we may guard ourselves against
being deceived in certain apparent changes of length in the limbs when
certain movements take place.
We see, then, that all the ideas previously enumerated as to
proportion, form, attitude, movement, depend on the study of the
skeleton and muscles. It will thus be easiest and most advantageous
to proceed in the following manner:--We will first of all study the
skeleton, which will teach us the direction of the axis of each part
of the limbs, the relative lengths and proportions of these portions,
and the osseous parts which remain uncovered by the muscles, and show
beneath the skin the shape and the mechanism of the articulations in
their relation to movements and attitudes. We shall then study the
muscles, and endeavour to know their shapes, at the same time that,
we complete the knowledge we shall have acquired of attitudes and
movements. In the third place, we will attempt the analysis of the
expression of the passions and emotions; and the study of the muscles
of the face, of which the mechanism in the movements of the physiognomy
is so special that it would be inconvenient to attempt to treat it with
that of the muscles of the trunk and limbs.
=First Part.=
THE SKELETON, ARTICULATIONS, PROPORTIONS.