Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani
19^th century
four replicas of book illustrations

Museo e Biblioteca di Storia della Medicina, Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare, Sapienza Università di Roma

Professor of anatomy at the university of Leyden, in 1747 Bernhard Siegfried Albinus published his Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani. The large-format work was illustrated by Jan Wandelaar, who provided precise detailing of individual bones and muscles in around 300 figures. An additional 12 plates represented the body as a whole. The plates showed the skeleton or the skinned human figure within an imaginary landscape dotted with ruins, graves and an exuberant vegetation. In two of them a pachyderm was included in the setting – its thick skin a reminder of the psychological difficulties which had to be overcome in order to reveal the delicate human machine. The work was reprinted several times.