Duval's artistic anatomy

Anatomy, as the derivation of the word indicates (from ἀνὰ, across, and τομὴ, section), is the study of the parts composing the body—muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, various viscera, &c.—parts which we separate one from the other by dissection, in order to examine their shapes and their relations and connections.

This study may be accomplished in various ways: (1) from a philosophical and comparative point of view, by seeking the analogies and differences that the organs present in animals of different species—which is called Comparative Anatomy; (2) from a practical point of view, by seeking out the arrangement of organs, the knowledge of which is indispensable to the physician and surgeon—this is called Surgical or Topographical Anatomy; (3) by examining the nature and arrangement of the organs which determine the external forms of the body—this is Plastic Anatomy, called also the Anatomy of External Forms, the Anatomy of Artists. It is the anatomy of external forms that we shall study here; but the artist ought to know not only the form of the body in repose, or in the dead subject, but also the principal changes of form in the body when in a state of activity, of movement, and of function, and should understand the causes which determine these changes. Plastic anatomy ought to be supplemented by a certain amount of knowledge of the functions of the organs, e.g., muscles and articulations; so that under the title of anatomy of the external forms of man we shall study at the same time the anatomy and the physiology of the organs which determine these forms. We should be contending for what has been long since conceded, were we to endeavour to show to what an extent the studies of anatomy and physiology are indispensable to the artist, who seeks to represent the human form under many and various types of action. Nevertheless, it may be useful to explain how the chefs-d’œuvre of ancient art have been produced with admirable anatomical exactness by men who certainly had not gone through any anatomical studies, and to show what special conditions aided them to acquire, by constant practice, the knowledge that we are obliged to seek day by day in the study of anatomy.

The Greek sculptors have reproduced the human form with marvellous anatomical exactness; in fact, the works of Phidias (the Theseus and the Ilissus), those of Myron (the Discobolus), those of Lysippus and of Praxiteles (the Sleeping Fawn), those of Agasias (the Fighting Gladiator), and other masterpieces given as models in all the schools of art, are such that it is impossible to find fault with them, or to discover in them the least inexactitude, either from an anatomical or a physiological point of view;[3] in fact, not only are the muscles, for example, prominent exactly in their places, but, more than that, these prominences are differently accentuated in corresponding muscles on the different sides, according to the nature of the movement; one side will present the muscles swelled up in a state of contraction, or the muscles may be in repose—that is, relaxed and relatively flattened. At the time when these works of art were produced, the study of anatomy, or even the dissection of the human body, had not yet been attempted; the respect in which the dead body was held was such that the physicians themselves, who should have been able to justify their motives for this study, had never as yet dissected a human body. In order to supply this want of direct knowledge Hippocrates had dissected animals, and had arrived at certain conclusions by the analogy that exists between the organs of quadrupeds and those in man. Galen himself dissected monkeys only, seeking to confine his examination to animals whose anatomical construction might be considered as most closely resembling that of man. Galen never possessed a human skeleton, for in a passage in his anatomical works he states the pleasure that he found in studying at last some human bones that had been deposited in a marshy place by a river which had overflowed its banks. We seem, then, to have a singular contradiction between these two facts, as we know on the one hand that the Greek artists have shown in their works a most rigorous anatomical exactitude, whilst on the other hand neither they nor their contemporary physicians and surgeons had made a study of the anatomy of man by the practice of dissection.

But this contradiction disappears altogether when we examine the conditions which permitted those artists to have constantly before their eyes the nude human body, living and in motion, and so set them to work to analyse the forms, and thus to acquire, by the observation of the mechanism of active muscular changes, a knowledge almost as precise as that which is now obtained by the accurate study of anatomy and physiology. It is sufficient, in fact, to recall to mind the extreme care the ancients gave to the development of strength, and of physical beauty, by gymnastic exercises. In Homer we see the heroes exercising themselves in racing, in quoit-throwing, and in wrestling; later we come to the exercise of the athletes who trained themselves to carry off the palm in the Olympic games; and it is evident, in spite of the ideas that we hold now respecting wrestlers and acrobats, that the profession of an athlete was considered a glorious one, as being one which not only produced a condition of physical beauty and high character, but constituted in itself a true nobility. Thus the life of the gymnast came to exercise a decisive influence on Greek art. The prize of the conqueror in the Olympic games was a palm, a crown of leaves, an artistic vase; but the chief glory of all was that the statue of the victor was sculptured by the most celebrated artist of the time. Thus Phidias produced the handsome form of Pantarces, and these athletic statues form almost the only archives of the Olympiads, upon which Emeric David was able to reconstruct his Greek Chronology. From these works, which became ideals of strength and beauty, the artist had long been able to study his model, which he saw naked every day, not only before his exercises, whilst rubbing himself over with oil, but during the race, or the leaping match, which showed the muscles of the inferior extremities, or during the throwing of the quoit, which made the contractions of the muscular masses of the arm and the shoulder prominent; and during the wrestling matches, which from the infinite varieties of effort, successively brought all the muscular powers into play. Was it then surprising that the images of the gods, destitute of movement and of life, which had so long satisfied the religious sentiment of the people, were succeeded by artistic representations of man in action in statues such as could embody the idea of strength and beauty, studies of the living statues of the gymnasium? Further, we shall see the decline of art proceed side by side with the abandonment of the exercises of the gymnasium. Much later, in the Middle Ages, art awoke and embodied ideas in figures without strength and life indeed, but which nevertheless express in a marvellous manner the mysterious aspirations of the period; but these have not anything in common with the realistic representation of the human form, well developed and active, as seen in Greek art. At the time of the Renaissance, artists not having any longer a living source of study in athletic sports, recognised the necessity of seeking for more precise knowledge in the anatomical study of the human body, in addition to the inspiration drawn from the study of the antique, and thus we see that the revival of the plastic arts occurred simultaneously with the introduction of the practice of dissection. This was not brought about without some difficulty.

In the year 1230, Frederic II., Emperor of Germany, and King of the Two Sicilies, passed a law prohibiting the practice of medicine without the practitioners having first studied the anatomy of the human body. In spite of two papal excommunications hurled against the author of this edict, dissections were henceforth regularly pursued in Italy; and one century later—in the year 1316—Mondino di Luzzi was able to write the first treatise on human anatomy, containing descriptions made from studies of the dead body. This treatise was printed in 1478. Artists rivalled physicians in the ardour with which they pursued their anatomical studies; and it may be said that all the painters and sculptors in the fifteenth century gave most careful attention to dissection, or at least studied demonstrations made upon the dead body, for all have left, amongst their drawings, studies that leave no doubt on this head. Among the great masters it may be noted that Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) left thirteen portfolios of various drawings and studies, among which are numerous anatomical studies of remarkable fidelity. The greater number of these were taken from Milan by the French in 1796, and afterwards they were in part restored to Italy; some of them, however, went to enrich the British Museum in London, and were published by Chamberlain.[4] In Fig. 1 is reproduced one of these anatomical drawings. It shows with what care—perhaps with over-scrupulous care—the illustrious master endeavoured to separate by dissection the various fasciculi of pectoral muscle, deltoid, and sterno-cleido-mastoid. It may be noted also that in his Treatise on Painting, Leonardo da Vinci devotes numerous chapters to the description of the muscles of the body, the joints of the limbs and of the “cords and small tendons which meet together when the muscles contract to produce its action,” &c.; and finally, in this same Treatise on Painting, he makes allusion at different times to a Treatise on Anatomy, which he intended to publish, and for which he had gathered together numerous notes. These are fortunately preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor.

Michael Angelo also (1475–1564) made at Florence many laborious studies of dissection, and left among his drawings beautiful illustrations of anatomy, of which several have been published in Choulant’s work, and by Seroux d’Agincourt.[5] Finally, we have numerous drawings by Raphael himself, as proof of his anatomical researches, among which we ought to mention, as particularly remarkable, a study of the skeleton intended to give him the exact indication of the direction of the limbs and the position of the joints for a figure of the swooning Virgin in his painting of the Entombment (Choulant, p. 15). We cannot end this short enumeration without quoting further the names of Titian and Andreas Vesalius, in order to show into what intimate relations artists and anatomists were brought by their common studies. Titian, in fact, is considered the real author of the admirable figures which illustrate the work—“De Humani Corporis Fabrica”—of the immortal anatomist, Andreas Vesalius, justly styled the restorer of anatomy. It is necessary, however, to add that though some of the drawings are by Titian, the greater number were executed by his pupil, Jan van Calcker, as is pointed out in the preface to the edition of the work published at Basle in 1543.

The renaissance of the plastic arts and that of anatomy were therefore simultaneous, and closely bound up one with the other; ever since that time it has been generally recognised that it is necessary to get by anatomical study that knowledge of form which the Greeks found themselves able to embody in consequence of the opportunities they had of studying the human figure in the incessant exercises of the gymnasium. Again, in 1648, when Louis XIV. founded at Paris the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture, which later on took the title of the École des Beaux-Arts, two sections of study were instituted side by side with the studios properly so called, for imparting to the pupils instruction considered as fundamental, and indispensable to the practice of art. These were the sections of perspective and anatomy.

It is not our place to plead, otherwise than by the preceding historical considerations, the cause of anatomy in its relation to painting and sculpture; but we ought at least to examine what method is likely to prove the most useful for its study. If each anatomical detail does not correspond to an artistic need we are liable in following any treatise written with other than an artistic aim to be entangled in superfluous names and useless descriptions; while at the same time we might neglect details which are to the artist of great importance, although considered of secondary value by authors who have written especially for students in medicine.

We ought, then, to ask ourselves, in the first place, what are the ideas that the artist should seek for in his study of anatomy? To this question all will reply that the ideas of proportion, of form, of attitudes and movements are those in which anatomy is relied upon to furnish precise rules; and as the expression of the emotions, either in painting or sculpture, cannot be reproduced except by various changes in the general attitude of the body, and in the special mechanism of the physiognomy moved by the muscles, we must conclude that our study should deal not only with proportions, form, attitudes and movements, but also with the expression of the emotions and passions. This, then, is the object to be attained. Suppose we try to accomplish it by examining in a first series of studies all that belongs to proportions; afterwards, in a second series, all that has relation to form; in a third, attitudes, &c. Such an order of proceeding, logical though it be, will have the disadvantage of causing numerous repetitions, and the more serious inconvenience of artificially separating parts which in the structure of the body are intimately connected. Thus, form is determined sometimes by osseous prominences, sometimes by the soft parts, which may be muscular or tendinous. Attitudes are determined by the muscles; but these are subject to laws which result from the position and action of the joints; so with movements in the expression of which it is necessary to consider, at the same time, what the conformation of the osseous levers (the direction of the bones and their articulation) allows, as well as that which the muscles accomplish, also the direction of the muscles and the differences of shape produced by their swelling and tension in action, as well as when the antagonistic muscles are relaxed. Proportions themselves cannot be defined without an exact knowledge of the skeleton, for it is the bones alone which furnish us with the landmarks from which to take measurements. A knowledge of the bones and of their articular mechanism is indispensable to us, that we may guard ourselves against being deceived in certain apparent changes of length in the limbs when certain movements take place.

We see, then, that all the ideas previously enumerated as to proportion, form, attitude, movement, depend on the study of the skeleton and muscles. It will thus be easiest and most advantageous to proceed in the following manner:—We will first of all study the skeleton, which will teach us the direction of the axis of each part of the limbs, the relative lengths and proportions of these portions, and the osseous parts which remain uncovered by the muscles, and show beneath the skin the shape and the mechanism of the articulations in their relation to movements and attitudes. We shall then study the muscles, and endeavour to know their shapes, at the same time that, we complete the knowledge we shall have acquired of attitudes and movements. In the third place, we will attempt the analysis of the expression of the passions and emotions; and the study of the muscles of the face, of which the mechanism in the movements of the physiognomy is so special that it would be inconvenient to attempt to treat it with that of the muscles of the trunk and limbs.