As I continued my cataloging of books in the Congregational Library, I stumbled across a book from 1706 with a very interesting history and unexpected contents. Its title, Kurtze Verfassung Der Anatomie, Wie Selbige Zu der Mahlerey und Bildhauerey erfordert wird, told me that the book was about anatomy and I began to look through the book.
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| Title Page, Detail |
What caught my eye right away were these stunning plates at the back of the book!
This was not what I imagined drawings in a book about anatomy to look like!
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| Biceps |
This book is the German translation of Roger de Piles’ Abrégé d’anatomie accomodé aux arts de peinture et de sculpture, published in 1667. François Tortebat reproduced the illustrations from Andreas Vesalius’ Fabrica (1538). Vesalius was a physician, anatomist and scholar, and de Piles was an artist and French diplomat (some biographies even claim he was a spy). De Piles’ book is important because it was one of the first anatomy book created for artists, not for those practicing medicine. The German translation held by the Moravian Archives was fascinating to page through and different words like in this picture would catch my eye!
Source: Ball. James Moore. Andreas Vesalius, the reformer of anatomy. Medical science press, 1910.
-Meghan Fitch
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