Essay question: “What can Figure 1 (the title page of Anatomia Mundini) tell us about dissection around 1500?”
(word count:)
12 2.0
Paintings are amongst the useful sources that help shed light to historical situations. They help along with other paintings and historical sources reflect the attitudes of the painter and society alike towards the subjects it portrays. They can even (subconsciously and implicitly) reveal social structure and hierarchy in terms of education, wealth, etc. The picture of title page of Anatomia Mundini, using a range of visual strategies, could do just that.
In the picture, dissection takes place in a Church. One can see the stained glasses as windows on the wall. There is a lecturer standing on a podium, some fellows or students who gather to observe the dissection, and a dissector who bows over a man with curled hair lying breathless on a long chair. These characters, with their special positions, postures, and clothes, constitute an authentic …show more content…
The dissector wears simple, if not shabby, clothes. He rolled up his sleeves and was holding a scalpel on his left hand. His hair is unkempt and clothes shabby. Everything seems normal except a sharp delineation that the fellows around the dissector, most probably the students who gather in the church to get information about the practical dissection, are shunning away. Their sleeves are not rolled up. They appear to distance themselves from the ‘operation chair’. They seem to be whispering secretively with each other. Their gazes upon the dead body and the dissector are aversive. It illustrates that they themselves do not want to get their hands dirty in the process of dissection and would just leave the work to the dissector to perform. They have problems with direct dissection as they think practical dissection is dirty, unhygienic, and a second-class work not suitable of being done by
(word count:)
12 2.0
Paintings are amongst the useful sources that help shed light to historical situations. They help along with other paintings and historical sources reflect the attitudes of the painter and society alike towards the subjects it portrays. They can even (subconsciously and implicitly) reveal social structure and hierarchy in terms of education, wealth, etc. The picture of title page of Anatomia Mundini, using a range of visual strategies, could do just that.
In the picture, dissection takes place in a Church. One can see the stained glasses as windows on the wall. There is a lecturer standing on a podium, some fellows or students who gather to observe the dissection, and a dissector who bows over a man with curled hair lying breathless on a long chair. These characters, with their special positions, postures, and clothes, constitute an authentic …show more content…
The dissector wears simple, if not shabby, clothes. He rolled up his sleeves and was holding a scalpel on his left hand. His hair is unkempt and clothes shabby. Everything seems normal except a sharp delineation that the fellows around the dissector, most probably the students who gather in the church to get information about the practical dissection, are shunning away. Their sleeves are not rolled up. They appear to distance themselves from the ‘operation chair’. They seem to be whispering secretively with each other. Their gazes upon the dead body and the dissector are aversive. It illustrates that they themselves do not want to get their hands dirty in the process of dissection and would just leave the work to the dissector to perform. They have problems with direct dissection as they think practical dissection is dirty, unhygienic, and a second-class work not suitable of being done by