A fugitive sheet of a seated female figure, her hand resting on a vase, with her thorax and abdomen dissected to reveal the ribs, vertebral column and pelvis. Photograph after a woodcut, 1611.

  • Sabio, Giovanni Antonio de Nicolini de, active 16th century.
Date:
1900-1999
Reference:
26738i
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Description

This sheet is part of a male and female set of fugitive sheet or flap-anatomies, in which consecutive layers of cut-out flaps allow a three-dimensional demonstration of human anatomy. The flaps are missing on this example and the ribs, vertebral column and pelvis shown are the base, or foundation, over which the flaps would have been applied. The accompanying text deals with the parts of generation in a woman. Fugitive sheets served as simple reference works for barber-surgeons, students and the general public interested in the human body. They first appeared in the early sixteenth century. Examples of flap anatomies can still be found in manufacture to this day

Publication/Creation

1900-1999

Physical description

1 photograph ; image 32.4 x 23.3 cm

Lettering

Delle parti della donna che servono alla generatione ; in Venetia MDCXI. apresso Sebastiano Combi. con licenza de'Superiori Lettering continues: Le parti del corpo humano, cosi interiori, come esteriori sono l'istesso nel maschio, e nella femina, sceglié done però quelle che sono necessarie per la prole; havendo per tanto l'altre parti mostrate nel disegno del maschio, resta solo mostrar qui quelle della femina, le quali però succintamente saranno mostrate, che altrimente sarebbe mestiero recitare tutte le cose raccontate da Gale. nel lib 14. 15....

References note

L. Crummer, "Early anatomical fugitive sheets," Annals of Medical History, v, no. 3, 1923, frontispiece and p. 208
L. Choulant, History and bibliography of anatomic illustrations, tr. and ed. M. Frank, Chicago 1920, revd ed. 1945, p. 156
L. H. Wells, "Anatomical fugitive sheets with superimposed flaps," Medical History, xii, 1968, pp. 403-407
A. Carlino, "Kǹowe thyself'. Anatomical figures in early modern Europe", Res, vol. xxvii, Spring 1995, pp. 58-59

Reference

Wellcome Collection 26738i

Reproduction note

This photograph is of a rare example of a woodcut print of a female fugitive sheet published by Sebastiano Combi in Venice in 1611, after the female example of the male and female sheets first published by Giovanni Antonio de Nicolini de Sabio in Venice in 1539. This is the foundation sheet on which flaps representing different layers of anatomy would have been pasted, concluding with a flap depicting the nude body and a flower, the stem of which the figure still holds. This particular sheet was once in the collection of the medical historian, LeRoy Crummer, who published it in 1923. The Wellcome Library has a set of the 1539 de Sabio fugitive sheets bound in a copy of Juan de Valverde's Vivae imagines partium corporis humani aereis formis expressae (Antwerp 1566)

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