Jacques Gamelin's Anatomy of 1779: Skeletons at Play and a Crucified Muscle Man

Four skeletons making music (Table 10). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

In 1779 a Toulouse printer, J. F. Desclassan, published a New Collection of Osteology and Myology, Drawn from Nature, for the Use of the Sciences and the Arts. Its author was not an anatomist but a painter, Jacques Gamelin, and it is one of the strangest and most imaginative anatomy books of its century.

A merchant's son who would not do business

Gamelin was born in Carcassonne on October 3, 1738, the son of a prosperous merchant. Educated by the Jesuits, he was sent to learn business under the baron de Puymaurin, a rich Toulouse industrialist, who soon saw that his assistant had no gift for trade and a great one for art. When Gamelin's father refused to send him to art school, the baron paid for him to attend the Académie royale de Toulouse himself. After five years Gamelin won the academy's first prize and went on to Paris, then, again with Puymaurin's help, to Rome, where he studied under David and Vien and became a painter to Pope Clement XIV.

His father's death left him rich, and he came home to teach at the academy in Toulouse. He is best known today for paintings and engravings of battles, held in museums across France. He died in Carcassonne on October 12, 1803.

The book

Back in France, Gamelin set to work on his great anatomy, probably paying for it from his inheritance, and dedicated it warmly to Puymaurin, whose engraved portrait it includes. The full-page copperplates, by Gamelin and the engraver Lavalée, show real talent and more imagination: scenes of the Resurrection and the Crucifixion, and skeletons at play. Vignettes on the title pages and elsewhere show battles, Death surprising a party of revellers, and the anatomical artist's studio.

The first part, on the bones, is a gallery of skeletons with personalities: one, winged, laughs as it holds up a sheet of drawings; another kneels with its back to us, reading a book; another sits up in its grave at the sound of the Last Trumpet; others lie on a tomb or sit on a marble slab. There are careful studies of the skull, the ribcage and foot, and the bones of the leg.

A laughing winged skeleton (Table 1). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

A skeleton reading (Table 5). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

Rising at the Last Trumpet (Table 6). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

Death attacks the revellers (page 17). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

The skull (Table 12). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

The second part, on the muscles, opens with a frontispiece of Saint Bartholomew, the apostle said to have been flayed alive, held down by his executioners. The plates that follow include a flayed man nailed to a cross, bodies laid out on dissecting tables, the muscles of the head and neck, and standing and seated figures, front and back, lettered for study.

The frontispiece of the myology: Saint Bartholomew about to be flayed. Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

The muscles, on a crucified figure (Table 1). Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

A figure on the dissecting table. Jacques Gamelin, Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie, Toulouse, 1779. National Library of Medicine.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, Historical Anatomies on the Web: "Jacques Gamelin: Nouveau recueil d'ostéologie et de myologie." Further reading there: Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. 15; Morton's Medical Bibliography, 5th ed. (1991), no. 401.1.