Plate 57 from Anatomia humani corporis. 522 x 358 mm. First edition. Stains in upper margin, but otherwise very good

Amsterdam, 1685. This large folio by Dutch physician, anatomist, poet, and playwright Govert Bidloo contains 105 plates engraved after Gérard de Lairesse, probably by Bloteling and Peter and Philip van Gunst.

Lairesse displayed his figures with everyday realism and sensuality, contrasting the raw dissected parts of the body with the full, soft surfaces of undissected flesh surrounding them; placing flayed, bound figures in ordinary nightclothes or bedding; setting objects such as a book, a jar, a crawling fly in the same space as a dissected limb or torso. He thus brought the qualities of Dutch still-life painting into anatomical illustration, (truncated) and gave a new, darker expression to the significance of dissection. De Lairesse’s images of dissected pregnancies and premature infants also reflect compassion—a quality unusual in art that was intended primarily to be scientific. (Inventory #: 51521)