Genga's Anatomy for Artists (1691): Muscles, Bones and the Statues of Ancient Rome

The engraved title page (Rome, 1691). Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Most anatomy books were written for doctors. Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno ("anatomy for the use and understanding of drawing"), published in Rome in 1691, was made for artists: it strips the body to its bones and muscles, then shows the same body in the most admired statues of the ancient world, so that a painter or sculptor could see what lies under the marble.

The surgeon and the academy

Bernardino Genga was born in 1620 in Mondolfo, in the Duchy of Urbino, and practised surgery at the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, where he died in 1690. He was a scholar of the classical medical texts and edited several works of Hippocrates. He also loved two kinds of anatomy: the specimens he prepared by dissection, and the bodies of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. The two came together at the French Academy in Rome (the Accademia di Francia), where he taught anatomy to artists.

In 1672 he published Anatomia chirurgica, a textbook for surgeons that ran through several editions. The artists' book came out a year after his death. Its drawings of his dissections were made by the painter Charles Errard (1606–1689), director of the academy, and were most likely engraved by François Andriot (died 1704). The papal physician Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654–1720) edited it and wrote much of the commentary.

The plate of emblems of death that follows the title: a memento mori. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Bones and muscles

The book has 59 copperplates of text and pictures, printed on one side of the page only. After the title and the emblems of death, the first 23 illustrated plates are the bones and muscles, drawn from Genga's own preparations: the skull from six sides, the ribcage and spine turned front, back and side, the arm and hand, and then figures with the skin removed, from the head and chest down to full standing bodies, front and back.

The skull from six sides. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The muscles of the head, neck, chest and abdomen. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

A standing muscle figure, front. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

And from behind. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The statues

The rest of the book turns to ancient statues, each drawn from several sides so its anatomy can be studied in the round:

• the Farnese Hercules, leaning on his club, with the apples of the Hesperides hidden behind his back;
• the Laocoön, without his sons or the serpents;
• the Borghese Gladiator, lunging forward;
• a faun from the Borghese collection;
• the Venus de' Medici;
• the boy pulling a thorn from his foot;
• and an Amazon from the house of Cesi.

The Farnese Hercules, front. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The Farnese Hercules from behind, the apples in his hand. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The Laocoön, without his sons. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The Borghese Gladiator. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

One variant of the book lacks the last three pictures and calls itself libro primo, "book one", though no second book ever appeared. An English translation was published in London in 1723 as Anatomy Improv'd.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, Historical Anatomies on the Web: Bernardino Genga, Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno (Rome: Domenico de Rossi, 1691). Further reading there: G. Amati, Bibliografia Romana; L. Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration, trans. Mortimer Frank; Morton's Medical Bibliography, ed. Jeremy Norman.