Crafting the Image of the Human Body: The Development of Interactive Anatomical Models in Early Modern Europe
Open Access
- Author:
- Buckley, Cali Eileen
- Graduate Program:
- Art History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 05, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Charlotte Houghton, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Craig Robert Zabel, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Brian A Curran, Committee Member
Anthony Cutler, Committee Member
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Outside Member
Bradford Albert Bouley, Outside Member - Keywords:
- History of Medicine
Women's History
Material Culture
Craftsmanship
Early Modern History
Early Modern Art
Germany
Anatomy - Abstract:
- This study explores the development of interactive anatomical models in the early modern era. The first chapters explore flapped prints and ivory manikins and their impact on later models including and full-figure wax models. The first chapter provides a narrative on the creation, replication, and dissemination of printed flap anatomies throughout Europe. These were some of the earliest anatomical images made predominantly for a lay public. Their creator was a man originally trained as a physician but who made a career as a printer. He combined his skills in medicine and the arts to create singular anatomical prints with multiple flaps—or “flap anatomies.” Their emergence in the Reformation era is not a coincidence—they were the product of an ideological revolution committed to making knowledge once held in academic hands available more broadly to a lay public. Chapter two tells the story of ivory manikins. The earliest of these were produced by an ivory turner who translated his expertise in minute carved ivories with fitted parts into anatomical models. He created a niche market that fulfilled the needs of new kinds of doctors. Educated male physicians were making inroads in women’s medicine and subsequently played a controversial role in a highly gendered field. They found they could increase their authority by demonstrating with objects crafted ad hoc. These small models could be used to illustrate lectures, but could not convey the intricacies of anatomy—accentuating the importance of the lectors’ words. Chapter three relates the afterlives of each of these models through changes in how they were seen in both the public and academic realms. Each flowed and ebbed in popularity, changing from anatomical tools to curiosities, antiques, and spectacles. This chapter follows each and also details the emergence of newer dissectable models—with an emphasis on Enlightenment era wax models—from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Exploring the making of models and comparing their historical contexts reveals that anatomical accuracy could be delivered selectively to adapt to specific social climates. The models I consider here were not simple representations of the body, but teaching tools, advertisements, and pieces of art that were intentionally crafted to incite curiosity and enhance the memory. Here, we can begin to understand how artists innovated ways to connect audiences to knowledge through objects.