Jehan Cousin's Livre de pourtraiture: A Renaissance Drawing Manual of the Human Body

The title page of the 1608 Paris edition, printed by Jean Leclerc. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

How do you draw a head turned three-quarters away, a hand seen edge-on, a figure lying on its back seen from its feet? The Livre de pourtraiture ("book of portraiture") answers with pictures: page after page of woodcuts showing each part of the body from every side, with lines and measurements laid over one copy and the same drawing left clean beside it. It became one of the most famous books on artistic anatomy and was reprinted again and again until the late 17th century. The National Library of Medicine holds an edition printed in Paris by Jean Leclerc in 1608.

Two artists called Jehan Cousin

The book is credited to Jehan Cousin the Younger (le jeune), born around 1522 in Sens, France. His father, Jehan Cousin the Elder (about 1490 to about 1560), was a celebrated painter and sculptor, often compared with his contemporary Albrecht Dürer. The son trained under the father and matched him so closely that even experts can barely tell their work apart.

Shortly before he died, the elder Cousin published a Livre de Perspective (1560), in which he announced that his son would soon publish a companion volume, the Livre de Pourtraicture. Editions of 1571 and 1589 are sometimes mentioned, but no copies of either seem to exist. The likeliest first printing is 1595, in Paris, by David Leclerc, with woodcuts cut by Jean Leclerc, soon after the younger Cousin's death.

Heads

The book starts with the head: face on and in profile, then turned three-quarters, then tipped up, down and away, every view measured with the proportion lines an artist could copy.

Heads face on and in profile, one of each measured out. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Eight heads, looking up, looking down, seen from above and below. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Hands and feet

Next come the parts beginners find hardest: hands flat and open, palm and back, pointing and seen from the side, and feet from the top, the back and every side.

Twelve views of the hand. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Twelve views of the foot. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Muscles, limbs and whole figures

Then the body under the skin: standing figures showing the muscles from the front, back and side, then arms and legs, outstretched or bent, each with the lengths of its parts marked.

The muscles of the body, front and back. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Legs bent at the knee, their proportions marked. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Whole figures follow, always in pairs in the same pose, one measured and one left clean: a woman in a landscape from the front and from behind, children, a man holding a staff, two men coming down a staircase, figures reclining on pedestals.

A woman in a landscape, measured (left) and unmeasured (right). Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Two figures coming down a staircase, seen from front and back. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Foreshortening

The book also works through foreshortening, the way a body seen end-on appears to shorten: figures on their backs and on their stomachs, viewed from the side, from the feet and from the head.

A figure lying on its back, from the side and from its feet. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

The book closes with a page of the lines, curves and angles used throughout, and the royal arms of Henri IV of France on the colophon.

The arms of Henri IV on the colophon. Photograph: National Library of Medicine.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, Historical Anatomies on the Web: Jehan Cousin, Livre de pourtraiture (Paris: Jean Leclerc, 1608). Further reading there: L. Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration, trans. Mortimer Frank; the Dictionnaire de biographie française, entry for Cousin, Jehan; R. Mortimer, Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts, French Books, vol. 1.