La ricerca dell'armonia: Rappresentazioni anatomiche nel Rinascimento (review)

This study explores the "iconography of Renaissance anatomy," identifying classical and medieval sources for the images employed by authors of sixteenth-century treatises, among whom — not surprisingly — Leonardo figures prominently. The author articulates his thesis at the outset and proceeds to substantiate it through a straightforward process. His strategy is to draw simul-taneously from text and image, so that the reader flips back and forth between narrative and illustration (a cumbersome but unavoidable task). Thus the strengths of the book do not derive from engaging prose or unanticipated turns, but from detailed analysis, or what the author might call the examination of distinct parts.

Even as dissection grew more intricate during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the author claims that anatomical treatises, including Leonardo's early studies, represented the human body as a harmonious entity, rather than a compilation of distinct elements. The analysis of individual organs was secondary to the goal of synthesis, or compositio. For example, in his treatise (1521) Berengario da Carpi sought to position organs correctly within the totality of the human form, aiming at artists as well as scientists. The abundant details in the eerie images in Charles Estienne's treatise on dissection (1545), which even substituted for the practice itself, were nonetheless integrated into bodies that were complete and well-defined. However, the most recognized name in anatomy, Andrea Vesalio, pursued an entirely different methodology in his De humani corporis fabrica (1543), representing isolated organs in sequence, leading to dissection, or the fragmentation of the body.

Laurenza privileges the harmonious view of human anatomy, contrasting it with medical science today. The author acknowledges Galen as the funda-mental classical source for medical discourse in the early modern period, but makes a crucial distinction between Galen's De usu partium and De anatomicis administrationibus. In the former work, Galen preserved the integrity of the body by synthesizing analytical detail; in the latter work he directed his attention to resolutio, the inductive method based on observation of isolated organs. According to Laurenza, Vesalio's familiarity with both of Galen's treatises places his strong analytical slant in its proper context.

Chapter 2 is among the most ambitious, providing a framework for ancient and medieval theories on anatomy and anatomical illustration. Aristotle's De partibus animalium was essential for Galen, but also for scholastic thinkers who gravitated towards a vision of synthetic form. Ptolomey's Cosmographia was also fundamental to the study of anatomy. The ancient author resolved the tension between analysis and synthesis through compromise, creating a worldview that he likened to the human body in the balance struck among detailed components. Fifteenth-century artists and humanists turned to antiquity for synthetic models, prompted by ancient rhetoric, dissection, and fragments of classical statuary.

Among Renaissance artists, humanists, and scientists, Leonardo, of course, remains the most complex and most fascinating, and his drawings comment on the theoretical positions cited above. Laurenza claims that earlier scholarship has tended to examine Leonardo's anatomical drawings in relation to scholastic thought, dissection, and perspective. His own strategy is to consider the drawings from their early to late stages, as they traverse the territory between the two poles of synthesis and analysis. From the beginning (1485-95), Leonardo represents the unity of the human body. Even when examining individual organs in connection with dissection (1506-08), he reintegrates parts into the whole, although in slightly later drawings (1510), he shows a progressive tension. In his last drawings (ca. 1513), Leonardo returns to organs at the core of the body; he explores the functions of the heart and embryo, documenting physiological complexities and contradictions but still striving for a unified whole.

Because Leonardo pressed incessantly on the boundaries between art and science, his anatomical drawings are important indicators of his investment in the authority of synthesis. One wishes to learn more about their relationship...