Duval's artistic anatomy

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION TO THE REVISED EDITION.

In offering instruction in anatomy to artists, one feels compelled at the outset to attempt an answer to the question: Of what use is anatomy, scientifically considered, in the training of the artist?

The artist requires to know his technique, just as an architect or an engineer needs to start with a knowledge of his materials.

Looking backward, we see that science and art have ever progressed side by side. The history of Egypt, of Greece, of the Renaissance, shows glorious traditions of art, along with a full development of learning and philosophy. The advancement of science and of art has always occurred simultaneously, and there never has been a time when they have been divorced from one another.

This is par excellence the age of technical education. There is no questioning the importance of science, or the aid the arts have received from it. We see it in architecture, in the influence of terra-cotta and steel frames; and in art, in the introduction of aniline colours.

Painting and sculpture are the earliest of the arts, and have produced some of the most cherished monuments of history; and originally the chief object portrayed was the human form, in action or repose.

Let us for a moment consider to what extent art has been indebted to anatomy in the production of the masterpieces of the past.

1. Egypt.—Egypt presents the first great School of Art, as of letters and philosophy, and from Egypt knowledge and culture flowed to Greece and Italy.

The vestiges of Egyptian art extant to-day comprise for the most part statues—some of them portraits—coins, sculpture (in low relief), and flat, painted outlines. As a rule, the representations of the human form pretend to no exact representation of detail of form or expression, and for the most part are executed in a formal and stereotyped fashion.

The amount of anatomical knowledge demanded by the art of Egypt could obviously be acquired by direct observation of the nude or semi-nude figures of the living. The history of Egypt, profoundly interesting from all points of view, is of special interest to the anatomist, and centres round the mode of treatment of the dead.

Ascribed usually to a belief in the immortality of the soul, the ceremonial treatment of the body after death was elaborate, and essentially religious. The body was regarded as sacred, and the process of embalming was a religious rite, entrusted to a band of the priesthood—Charhebs or Paraschistes—and no greater detail of anatomical examination was permitted than was deemed necessary for the proper preservation of the body. This band of the priesthood was moreover shunned and outcast, and yet with all these disadvantages some knowledge of anatomical structure must have been obtained.

It was only later, when Greek influence became felt, that a study of anatomy arose in the Medical School of Alexandria. Egypt was the nursing mother of medical teaching, and Alexandria was the first great medical school. Erasistratus (B.C. 285) was the first great anatomist, and he utilised condemned criminals for dissection. Herophilus, a Jew, is said to have dissected 600 bodies.

2. Greece and Rome.—The historical importance of Egyptian art and the Alexandrine School of Anatomy lies in the influence which they exerted upon the culture of Greece and Italy.

Science and art were introduced directly into Greece and Italy from Egypt. Anatomical knowledge in Greece begins with Hippocrates (B.C. 400), who studied in Egypt under Democritus of Abdara. Galen, later (A.D. 131), the great Roman physician, was a Greek by birth, and was taught his anatomy by Heraclianus at Alexandria.

Art in those days had ideals. Its aims were the perpetuation of the godlike, the heroic, the representation of perfect beauty and manly strength. Every reproduction was required to be, if possible, more beautiful than the original—virtually, as Lessing says, a law against caricature. “By no people,” says Winckelmann, “was beauty so highly esteemed as by the Greeks.”

Moreover, the Greek artist was surrounded by a crowd of witnesses, in the masterpieces of sculpture, and in the living active forms of perfect manhood and womanhood. In the games there were ample opportunities for the study of the nude; and every evanescent, subtle movement could be noticed of the lithe and supple frame of the athlete.

Marked attention was given to physical culture; clothing was light, movements free, so that the environment was perfect for the purposes of the sculptor or figure-painter. Prizes were given for beauty, and the artists were the judges.

The work of the artistic anatomist of those days was superficial in a double sense. Cremation was the usual mode of burial, the anatomist dissected apes, and beyond an occasional opportunity of handling human bones, little exact anatomical knowledge was available. But from the artist’s point of view all the anatomy they needed was before their eyes. The best models procurable were before them; and an art that in some respects is perfect owes nothing to the science of anatomy.

3. The Art of the Renaissance.—Egyptian art shows knowledge of form; Greco-Roman art, knowledge of form and proportion; the art of the Renaissance reaches a higher platform, in its portrayal of movement and the expression of emotion.

Three factors combined to give the impetus to art at the time of the revival of learning. In 1315 Mondino di Luzzi made the first public demonstration of the anatomy of the human body. In 1400–1420 the process of wood-engraving, and subsequently the art of printing, were invented. Linked with these two facts, and with the general advance of learning, science, and art, was the great religious revival of that period. The religious sentiment gave the keynote to the artistic pre-eminence of the old masters. Their themes were great, and the result was a grandeur and a power that no merely decorative or realistic school can ever attain.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, artists and anatomists are constantly found in association as fellow-workers and as personal friends. The great work of Andreas Vesalius on Anatomy was illustrated in an exact and artistic manner by Jan van Calcker, Titian’s favourite pupil. Leonardo da Vinci and Della Torre; Michael Angelo and Colombo; Benvenuto Cellini and Da Carpi; and other names might be cited to show the close relations of the artists and anatomists of those days.

There is little doubt that the old masters seized every opportunity of becoming acquainted with anatomical structure. Vasari used to advise his pupils to study “the antique, the nude, and dissections from nature.” Michael Angelo was in the habit of first sketching his figures in the nude condition, and afterwards clothing them with the necessary drapery. Leonardo da Vinci has left few complete pictures; but there are numerous sketches in existence (notably at Milan) in which he has drawn with precision, dissections—e.g., of the knee joint, with bones, ligaments, and muscles in proper position. Ruskin says of him: “We have in this great master a proof of the manner in which genius submits to labour in order to attain perfection.”

4. Modern Art.—For many reasons modern art is more dependent than ever upon anatomical knowledge. Not to dwell upon the ennobling power of religious feeling—notably absent from modern art—the artist of the present day suffers from the plutocratic conditions of modern life, the inartistic fashions of modern dress, and the difficulty of obtaining accurate and well-formed human models; and is compelled to depend more and more upon a scientific knowledge of anatomy.

Among the old masters there is often an excessive exhibition of anatomical structure, and this is liable to occur even more in some of the work of modern artists. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and it is of supreme importance that the anatomical knowledge used by the painter or sculptor should be properly applied, so that form, proportion, contour, and expression may all have equal value.

It is too common, unfortunately, for present-day models to be disproportionate in form and deficient in muscular development, and the mistakes of nature are too often reproduced, in the form of defects or exaggerations, in modern sculpture and pictures. The student should seize every opportunity of studying the well-developed living nude form in action in order to obtain an adequate idea of the pattern which he desires to copy.