Skull Drawing With White Chalk Antiquity

Abstract

The structure of the human body and its parts is of obvious relevance in medicine, but it has also played a role in art. Accurate observation of surface or external anatomy is essential in both disciplines, and its understanding has been enhanced by knowledge of what is found beneath the skin, the internal anatomy, usually based on dissection. The role of anatomy in art in general, and in academies of art in particular, is the theme of this paper. The revival of dissection in 14th-century Italy was, if not causative, at least coincidental with the Renaissance. In 1563, Vasari founded the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, with una Anatomia included in its regulations. As a liberal art taught by university graduates, anatomy helped raise the status of painters and sculptors from artisans to artists and from guild to academy. Anatomy teaching was required in subsequent academies in Rome (1593) and Paris (1648), where the pattern of drawing from drawings, from casts, and from life was established and a Professor of Anatomy appointed in 1777. Anatomy was central to two of the Academy's most important genres, history painting and portraiture. The Academy system, with its emphasis on anatomy, spread to other European cities and to the Caribbean and the Americas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. This paper is concerned with the role of anatomy in the founding of art academies in general, while its companion paper, 'A Tale of Two Cities', considers the cases of the academies in London and Dublin in particular.

Art

The earliest known painting, dating from 40 000 years ago, is a stippled red disc on the wall of the Cueva de El Castillo in Cantabria, Spain (Pike et al. 2012). In the same cave complex is a hand stencil, dating from 37 000 years ago, which can claim to be the earliest depiction of human anatomy. Analysis of sexual dimorphism in these, and other European hand stencils, shows that the artists who made them were predominantly female (Snow, 2013). Drawings of bison and horses were made in caves in Altamira and Lascaux 12 000 years ago, and recognisably human figures in the Cave of Swimmers in Egypt date from 10 000 years ago. Like the more detailed human images painted on a rock in Australia's Northern Territory 8000 years ago, such figurative art was based on observation of visible features, or external anatomy.

Anatomical dissection

The Smith papyrus, dating from around 1600 BCE and based on a document from 3000–2500 BCE, is thought to be the earliest record of rational observations in natural science (Standring, 2016). It contains the first descriptions of the interior of the skull, including the surface of the brain and the meninges covering it. Such internal anatomy could only be observed vicariously, during mummification or through gaping wounds, as the deliberate opening of a human body violated cultural norms (Standring, 2016). Anatomical dissection – the taking apart of the human body to understand its internal structure and function – was briefly practised in the Hellenic world, providing information on the internal anatomy of the body to practitioners such as Hippocrates (ca. 460–370 BCE; Standring, 2016). However, it was subsequently abandoned, principally for religious reasons, for over a millennium and a half. No recorded dissection was performed from the time of Herophilus of Chalcedon (330–260 BCE) until the election of Pope Boniface VIII and the first public dissection of a human body by Mondino de Luzzi in Bologna around 1315. His book, Anathomia corporis humani (c. 1316), was the first dissection manual and appeared in print in 1478, followed by at least 40 editions (Porter, 1999).

Alberti

Dissection was important not only for medical doctors such as Mondino, but also for artists who were interested in both the external and internal anatomy of the body. In the first treatise on painting, written by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) in 1435, anatomy features in the first two books. Book I makes mention of bodily proportions (Alberti, 1972). Book II is about the art of representation and Alberti advises that the bones should be sketched in first 'then add the sinews and muscles, and finally clothe the bones and muscles with flesh and skin' (Alberti, 1972). Even for a clothed figure 'we first have to draw the naked body beneath and then cover it with clothes' (Alberti, 1972). So, internal anatomy was the precursor of the external form.

Alberti also produced the first treatise on sculpture, De Statua, written before 1464 (Blunt, 2009). In it he asked 'who would dare to be a ship builder if he did not know how many parts there are in a ship…and how the parts of any construction fit together? Yet how many sculptors have observed and properly understood the structure of any limb…' (Alberti, 1972). The book also contained detailed descriptions of body proportions, and how to measure them. A stick the height of a person, from the sole of the foot to the top of the head, was called an exempeda. An exempeda could be divided into six pedes (feet), each foot into 10 unceolae (inches) and each inch into 10 minuta (minutes), so an exempeda equals 600 minutes, and is unique for each person. Curves and angles were measured in three dimensions with a finitorum, calibrated from the exempeda. These measurements and proportions were taken 'from beautiful subjects' and so physical extremes were left out (Alberti, 1972). However, Alberti's knowledge of the subject was limited and he concluded that 'it would also be extremely valuable to know the number of bones and the projection of muscles and sinews' (Alberti, 1972). One of the first to take his advice was Antonio Pollaiuolo (1432–1498) who, according to Vasari, 'dissected many bodies in order to study their anatomy' (Vasari, 1996). Two of his successors, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, also engaged in dissection, and made significant advances in both art and anatomy.

Leonardo

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) grew up in Florence and, while planning treatises on both painting and anatomy, completed neither. Indeed, almost all of his anatomical drawings were not seen until several centuries after his death. His notebooks, however, cover anatomy, botany, geology, mathematics, mechanical engineering and zoology and indicate 'a profound belief in the value of experiment and direct observation' (Blunt, 2009). The main object of visual scrutiny was the human body, as nature's supreme creation (Kemp, 2011). Pollaiuolo notwithstanding, it is unclear if any Renaissance artist before him actually dissected, so Leonardo may have been the first artist to 'anatomise' and so directly observe, and record, the internal structure of the human body (Kemp, 2011). The musculoskeletal system was particularly suited to his interests. He dissected a human leg in the 1480s, probably at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, attended the dissection of the 'centenarian' in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in the winter of 1507/1508, and in the winter of 1510/1511 worked alongside the anatomist Marcantonio della Torre in the medical school of the University of Pavia (Clayton & Philo, 2010). In his drawings and paintings, he valued images which agreed 'most exactly with the thing imitated' (Blunt, 2009). He considered it necessary for the painter to know the internal anatomy of man, writing in his notebook:

The painter who has a knowledge of the sinews, muscles, and tendons will know very well in the movement of a limb how many and which of the sinews are the cause of it, and which muscle by swelling is the cause of the contraction of that sinew; and ….will in divers ways and universally indicate the various muscles by means of the different attitudes of his figures (Da Vinci, 2008).

He was aware of function and of the importance of accurately depicting muscles when relaxed:

You should not make all the muscles of your figures conspicuous; even if they are shown in the correct place they should not be made too evident, unless the limbs to which they belong are engaged in the exertion of great force or labour; and the limbs that are not under strain should have no such display of musculature. If you do otherwise you will have produced a sack of nuts rather than a human figure (Clayton, 2002).

Leonardo frequently combined a number of dissections in each drawing, enabling the structures to be accurately identified today, and was the first to depict cross-sectional anatomy (Jose, 2001). He was aware of the work of other anatomists, and his library included the Fasciculus Medicinae, by Johannes de Ketham, Cyrurgia by Guido de Cauliaco, and a libro di notomia, likely to be Mondino's Anathomia (Clayton & Philo, 2010). He was the first anatomist to describe the frontal sinus in the skull, the ventricles in the brain, the four-chambered heart, and atherosclerosis, or narrowing, of the arteries (Laurenza, 2012).

However, Leonardo faced a number of challenges – opportunities for dissection were rare, legal ones rarer still, and access to female cadavers almost impossible. Where his drawings are grossly inaccurate, such as his drawing of a uterus with abnormal projections and ligaments, it is thought to be based on that of a cow, which is normally bicornuate.

Embalming would not become common practice until the end of the 19th century, so dissection was smelly and greasy, and notebooks were not used in the dissecting room. Drawings were made from memory after dissection, which may explain the changes to several drawings and minor errors. His overall accuracy indicates minute observation at the dissecting table and a prodigious memory. These, along with imagination, are essential to the artist:

Knowing that you cannot be a good painter unless you are a universal master capable of imitating with your art all the qualities of the forms which nature produces, and that you will not be able to do this unless you see them in your mind and copy them from there, when you go through the fields turn your mind to different objects, and study them one after another, making a bundle of selected and chosen things (Blunt, 2009).

Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) dissected corpses in the hospital of Santo Spirito in Florence as early as 1493 (Wackernagel, 1981). He had carved a wooden crucifix for the church there, and the prior had given him an opportunity to study practical anatomy (Vasari, 1996). According to his biographer, Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo was:

…accommodated with a room with bodies so as to be able to practice dissection, which gave him the greatest possible pleasure. This was the beginning of his involvement in that practice, which he then pursued as long as chance allowed (Baker, 2002).

In his early career, based on his close knowledge and study of nature, he depicted idealised forms both in sculpture – David and the Pieta in St Peter's – and fresco – the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. His anatomical knowledge is evident though the musculature, suggesting that the models were male, a preparatory drawing of Mary Magdalene for The Entombment being the only documented case of Michelangelo using a female model (Gayford, 2017).

The major events of the early Cinquecento, including Luther's 95 Theses in 1517, the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the Counter Reformation, changed the political, religious and cultural landscape and Michelangelo's approach to art. Michelangelo appears not to wish to depict beauty, but an idea or spiritual state. The nudes in the Last Judgement over the altar of the Sistine Chapel, painted between 1534 and 1541, are anatomically inaccurate, 'heavy and lumpish, with thick limbs, lacking in grace', with contracted muscles appearing perilously close to Leonardo's 'sack of nuts' (Blunt, 2009). This Mannerist approach developed, and the spiritual image replaced nature, resulting in works such as the Rondanini Pieta, where 'he seems to have deprived his human symbols of all corporeal quality' (Blunt, 2009).

Guilds

In medieval times, artists were craftsmen who performed a practical function under the direction of the Church and through the organisation of the Guilds. The Renaissance brought great change, with its emphasis on naturalism and the scientific study of the world based on perspective and anatomy (Blunt, 2009). The liberal arts – astronomy, geometry, music, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric and grammar – were practised by free men, the mechanical arts, by slaves (Colvin, 1988). A duel had been fought between a cousin of Baccio Bandinelli and the Vidame de Chartres because the latter accused the Florentine nobles of practising manual arts when they took an active interest in painting and sculpture (Blunt, 2009). Clearly, there was a need to enhance the status of the artist by emphasising the intellectual aspects of his work and its associations with the liberal arts, and so progress from the Guild to the Academy.

The academy

The grove of the hero Academus in Athens gave its name to Plato's school nearby, subsequently to the school of thought associated with Plato, and later to institutions for philosophical and literary studies. It was Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), painter, sculptor, architect and, arguably, the first art historian with the publication of The Lives of Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in 1550, who proposed the establishment of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. The Italian word, disegno has several meanings, including 'drawing' and 'design', with arti del disegno signifying the visual arts in general (Murray & Murray, 1997). In 1560, the sculptor Montorsoli had suggested creating a special burial place for painters and obtained the former Benizi Chapel in the cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence. This led to the revival of the artists' guild, the Compagnia di San Luca, which met on 24 May 1562 to reinter the remains of their late colleague, Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), in their chapel. Following discussions with the Duke of Florence, Cosimo de'Medici, Vasari called for a meeting to plan an academy. In January 1563, statutes were drawn up and the Accademia del Disegno was founded in Florence, with the writer Vincenzo Borghini as luogotenente (vice president) and Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Michelangelo as capi (honorary president; Goldstein, 1996).

Florence

The statutes of the Accademia del Disegno comprise 47 articles, the first of which credits Duke Cosimo with creating an institution in which beginners would learn the arts of disegno (Pevsner, 1940). Others were concerned with administration, religious services and commemoration of members and their works – reflected in the funeral of Michelangelo the following year, in his monument in Santa Croce, and in Vasari's second edition of Lives, published in 1563. Article 30 provides for an exhibition space, article 31 required the members to create a library of drawings, models and plans for the students, while articles 32 and 33 provided for three masters – a painter, a sculptor and an architect – to teach, either in the academy or their own workshop, and to propose qualified students for membership (Goldstein, 1996).

As in all such organisations, the selection of members proved controversial and this led to alteration of the bye-laws in July 1563. These emended regulations also provided for lectures on anatomy ('una Anatomia') to be held in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova (Goldstein, 1996). In the second edition of Lives, the study of anatomy is newly cited in the entries for Donatello, Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo. Vasari also writes how he and Salvati studied anatomy from corpses in a Roman cemetery, and he praised Bronzino's painting of St Bartholomew as being a true flayed figure (Rubin, 1995).

The Accademia del Disegno can claim to be the first academy of arts. It established important precedents which its successors would follow, albeit with varying degrees of success. By choosing Duke Cosimo de' Medici as its patron, it created access to the world of the great and powerful. Its liberal arts aspirations, while not always achieved in practice, helped its members rise from artisans to artists. Its teaching methods helped set a standard and ensure both conceptual and technical uniformity – an academy style.

Rome

As early as 1578, Federico Zuccaro had complained that study in the Florence academy was being neglected and that reform was needed (Goldstein, 1996). When he was elected president of the Roman Accademia di San Luca in 1593, he had an opportunity to see his ideas enacted. Rules drawn up in 1593 and 1596 committed the Roman academy to education. Novices would begin by drawing from drawings, from reliefs and by drawing body parts – heads, hands and feet – from casts, before progressing to draw from antique sculptures and from nude models. Academicians would participate and award prizes (Goldstein, 1996). The rules of 1607 specify that 'The studies of the academy will be of drawing, painting, anatomy, sculpture, architecture, perspective, and everything else of concern to the profession' (Pevsner, 1940). Zuccaro's more theoretical aspirations were less successful and his philosophical approach, distinguishing disegno interno, which enters the mind as a spark of divine inspiration, from disegno esterno, its inferior artistic expression, fell on deaf ears (Goldstein, 1996). Sir Denis Mahon considered Zuccaro 'a flash in the pan' whose theories were unsuitable for adoption by an academy of working artists (Mahon, 1947).

Paris

While the art academy had originated in Italy, the Académie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded in Paris in 1648, has had the greatest influence (Cunningham, 2010). An official institution, protected and supported by King Louis XIV, it was reserved for, and promoted the interests of, visual artists, and provided for the teaching of art as a liberal discipline. One of its first acts was to appoint specialist teachers, including Quatroulx for anatomy (Goldstein, 1996). The rules of 1655 provided for a royal subvention, rooms on crown property, a monopoly on life drawing, monthly lectures and annual competitions. Those of 1663 divided the drawing course into a lower class for copying from the drawings of the professors, the Salle du Dessin, and a higher class for life drawing. The latter, depicting a male nude (Fig. 1) and often termed an 'academy', was:

…usually a drawing in red or black chalk, with white highlights, on white or tinted paper; in describing the figure, stress was laid on the contour, the forms so articulated typically modeled with parallel strokes and cross hatchings, following the practice of such Renaissance artists as Michelangelo and also showing the effects of studying the figure first in engravings (Goldstein, 1996).

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, *Male Nude Study*, Charcoal heightened with white chalk on blue paper. Credit: National Gallery of Art, Washington.

This sequence of 'drawing from drawings, drawing from casts, drawing from the living model was regarded as the foundation of the academic curriculum' and remained valid until the late 19th century, augmented by lectures on perspective, geometry and anatomy, and supported by a reference library (Pevsner, 1940).

Following a visit to the Academy in 1666, the King's first minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert made a number of important interventions. The first was to ensure a monthly lecture on a specific work in the royal collection, starting with Charles Le Brun on Raphael's St Michael. The second was that the best students should go to Rome on a four-year scholarship to improve their skills and copy antique sculptures and buildings. The winners of the 'Grand Prix de Rome' attended L'Académie de France à Rome established in 1666. Its founder, Charles Errard the Younger was an advocate of anatomy:

The knowledge of anatomy being of great value for painters and sculptors who wish to become knowledgeable and who want to understand the different effects that the muscles produce according to the different movements, the Rector of the Academy will have the dissection of a corpse undertaken every winter and will take care also to have it cast, in order for the students to learn the situation of the muscles and the effects of their movements. (Article XI, 1666) (Cunningham, 2010).

In 1667, a textbook An Epitome of Anatomy Suited to the Arts of Painting and Sculpture, was published in Paris by the painter Francois Tortebat, and remained in print for more than a century (Cunningham, 2010). With text by Roger de Piles, it used illustrations copied from the first accurately illustrated anatomy book De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) by Andreas Vesalius. In 1667, the Academy also organised its first exhibition of members' works, which became regular events, the Salons, after 1737 (Goldstein, 1996).

In 1677, there was a formal amalgamation of the academies in Paris and Rome. Sir Denis Mahon noted that the Rome academy could not 'altogether swallow the accentuation of the rational which was so characteristic of theory' in Paris (Mahon, 1947). In anatomy, however, they appear to have shared a common enthusiasm. In Rome, together with the Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the Santo Spirito Hospital, Bernadino Genga, Errard produced an illustrated book on anatomy for artists in 1691, based on dissections and featuring classical sculptures, including the Laocoön, considered from an anatomical standpoint (Fig. 2; Cunningham, 2010).

Bernard Genga, *Profile View of Laocoonte*, 1691, Engraving, from his book *Anatomia per Uso et Intelligenza del Designo Ricercata Non Solo su Gl'ossi, e Muscoli del Corpo Humano; Ma Dimonstrata Ancora su le Statue Antiche Pia Insigne di Roma*, Rome, 1691. Credit: Wellcome Collection.

In 1680, Testelin, the Secretary of the Academy, published his Tables de Precéptes which summarised the Academy rules, while Roger de Piles went further with his Balance des Peintres (1708) which graded painters on a scale of 0 to 80 based on their composition, expression, design (drawing) and colour. Raphael and Rubens tied for top marks with 65, with Rembrandt on 49, Leonardo on 48 and Michelangelo a mere 36 (Pevsner, 1940). Subject matter was also graded, with still-lifes at the bottom, then landscapes, pictures of animals, portraits and history paintings, which depicted classical, mythological and biblical scenes, at the top (Pevsner, 1940).

Professor of anatomy

In Paris, from 1776 onwards, 'demonstrations on the corpse' were conducted in the Académie itself. The following year, a full professor of anatomy was appointed to give one course and to teach 'de cette science qui conviennent aux arts de peinture et de sculpture' (Cunningham, 2010). His name was Jean-Joseph Suë (the Younger) and, in 1788, he published Elémens d'Anatomie á l'Usage des Peintres, des Sculpteurs et des Amateurs (Cazort et al. 1996 ). The timetable of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture became established. The life class had to be attended from 6 to 8 am during the summer and from 3 to 5 pm (à la lampe) in the winter. Perspective was taught on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, with anatomy on Saturday afternoons (Pevsner, 1940).

The formal establishment of art academies enabled the transition from artisan to artist. Anatomy was one of the liberal arts essential to this process, and its importance was assured with the appointment of a Professor, as it underpinned the drawing of academy nudes in the life class and the creation of the two most important genres, history paintings and portraiture. While the earliest academies of art were in Florence and Rome, the Académie in Paris became the model for art academies worldwide. Academies of art were established in Antwerp (1663), Vienna (1687), Berlin (1696), Bologna (1710), Brussels (1711), Madrid (1744), Parma (1752), Copenhagen (1754), St Petersburg (1758), Amsterdam (1767), London and Stockholm (1768), Mexico City (1783), Buenos Aires (1789), Philadelphia (1805), Havana (1818), Dublin (1823), Edinburgh (1826) and Santiago (1849; Pevsner, 1940; Goldstein, 1996). The companion paper to this, 'A Tale of Two Cities', considers the cases of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in Dublin, in detail.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for funding Ms Sealy; the President, Fellows and Research Committee of St John's College, Oxford, for hosting Professor Lee's sabbatical; and Professor Peter Cherry of Trinity College Dublin.

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Citing Literature

Skull Drawing With White Chalk Antiquity

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joa.13131