.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Details
VESALIUS, Andreas (1514-64). De humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Basel: Johannes Oporinus, June 1543.
The first edition of Vesalius’s magnum opus, which revolutionized the science and teaching of anatomy, and gives an encyclopedic account of the structure and workings of the human body. A fine copy, with a French provenance demonstrating the Vesalian influence spreading through Europe. The integration of typography and woodcut provided a clearer and more detailed description and illustration of human anatomy than any previous work. It spelled the end of Galen’s authority and the beginning of scientific dissection, with anatomical study proceeding from the skeleton and muscles through the blood vessels, nerves, abdominal viscera and thoracic organs, to the brain. This most beautiful medical book ever published combines scientific exposition with art and typography in a manner unprecedented and unequalled. The woodcuts by artists of the school of Titian are both iconographically and artistically important. The series of fourteen muscle men show landscapes that, when assembled in reverse order, form a panorama of the Euganean Hills near Padua, scenery well known to Vesalius while he was at work on the Fabrica. The frontispiece shows the anatomist himself at the center of the anatomical theater, demonstrating from a female cadaver. Behind, in the observers’ gallery stands Death, while beneath the dissecting table and in the foreground barbers are seen quarreling, displaced from their former role as surgeons. A young man at the railing is sketching in a book, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist. The full-page author’s portrait facing the beginning of the text is the only surviving authentic likeness of Vesalius. PMM 71; Grolier, Medicine 18A; Dibner 122; Garrison-Morton 375; Osler 567; Norman 2137.
Large folio (400 x 277mm). Complete with 355 leaves and two full sheets in quires m and p. Roman and italic types, occasional use of Greek and Hebrew types, printed shoulder notes. Typographical title; imprint and privilege set into woodcut pictorial frontispiece (anatomical theater); author’s woodcut portrait dated 1542 and printer’s device; upwards of 200 woodcut illustrations by Jan Stephan von Kalkar (c.1499-1546/50) and/or other pupils of the school of Titian, executed under the author’s supervision, including full-page skeletons and muscle-men, large diagrams of veins and nerves, mid-size views of the abdomen and thorax, of the skull and brain, and numerous smaller cuts of the bones, organs and other anatomical parts; numerous historiated initials, especially cut for this edition, showing putti and dwarves in the dissecting room and robbing cadavers from the gallows and graves (a few minor creases, light damp-staining visible in some lower-outer margins, final leaf with creasing ironed out and some repair not affecting colophon and device). 17th-century French mottled calf, gilt floral tooling in six compartments of spine, citron morocco lettering piece, red-stained edges (minor restoration to binding extremities); red half-morocco fall-down-back box. Provenance: Dr. Jacques Mallet, professor of medicine at Caen (17th-century ownership inscription, a few marginal notes); Louis Lepecq de La Clôture (1736-1804) at La Ducquerie, professor of surgery at Caen, of medicine at Rouen, author of Observations sur les maladies épidémiques 1776 (owner’s inscriptions, a few marginal notes).
The first edition of Vesalius’s magnum opus, which revolutionized the science and teaching of anatomy, and gives an encyclopedic account of the structure and workings of the human body. A fine copy, with a French provenance demonstrating the Vesalian influence spreading through Europe. The integration of typography and woodcut provided a clearer and more detailed description and illustration of human anatomy than any previous work. It spelled the end of Galen’s authority and the beginning of scientific dissection, with anatomical study proceeding from the skeleton and muscles through the blood vessels, nerves, abdominal viscera and thoracic organs, to the brain. This most beautiful medical book ever published combines scientific exposition with art and typography in a manner unprecedented and unequalled. The woodcuts by artists of the school of Titian are both iconographically and artistically important. The series of fourteen muscle men show landscapes that, when assembled in reverse order, form a panorama of the Euganean Hills near Padua, scenery well known to Vesalius while he was at work on the Fabrica. The frontispiece shows the anatomist himself at the center of the anatomical theater, demonstrating from a female cadaver. Behind, in the observers’ gallery stands Death, while beneath the dissecting table and in the foreground barbers are seen quarreling, displaced from their former role as surgeons. A young man at the railing is sketching in a book, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist. The full-page author’s portrait facing the beginning of the text is the only surviving authentic likeness of Vesalius. PMM 71; Grolier, Medicine 18A; Dibner 122; Garrison-Morton 375; Osler 567; Norman 2137.
Large folio (400 x 277mm). Complete with 355 leaves and two full sheets in quires m and p. Roman and italic types, occasional use of Greek and Hebrew types, printed shoulder notes. Typographical title; imprint and privilege set into woodcut pictorial frontispiece (anatomical theater); author’s woodcut portrait dated 1542 and printer’s device; upwards of 200 woodcut illustrations by Jan Stephan von Kalkar (c.1499-1546/50) and/or other pupils of the school of Titian, executed under the author’s supervision, including full-page skeletons and muscle-men, large diagrams of veins and nerves, mid-size views of the abdomen and thorax, of the skull and brain, and numerous smaller cuts of the bones, organs and other anatomical parts; numerous historiated initials, especially cut for this edition, showing putti and dwarves in the dissecting room and robbing cadavers from the gallows and graves (a few minor creases, light damp-staining visible in some lower-outer margins, final leaf with creasing ironed out and some repair not affecting colophon and device). 17th-century French mottled calf, gilt floral tooling in six compartments of spine, citron morocco lettering piece, red-stained edges (minor restoration to binding extremities); red half-morocco fall-down-back box. Provenance: Dr. Jacques Mallet, professor of medicine at Caen (17th-century ownership inscription, a few marginal notes); Louis Lepecq de La Clôture (1736-1804) at La Ducquerie, professor of surgery at Caen, of medicine at Rouen, author of Observations sur les maladies épidémiques 1776 (owner’s inscriptions, a few marginal notes).