Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Katalógus / Catalogue - II. Venus Anatomica / Venus Anatomica - Horányi Ildikó: A női test az anatómiai ábrázolások tükrében / The Female Body in the Eight of Anatomical Representations

The Female Body in the Light of Anatomical Representations ILDIKÓ HORÁNYI [SUMMARY] Reviewing the anatomical representations of the female body, one finds that up until the 18th, and even the 20th century, very few pictures called attention to features that differentiate the female body from the male body, apart from the inner genitals and the foetus in the womb. The same is found when one examines the interplay of art and anatomical research. The view that the naked female body was perhaps taboo for medical science can be discarded, although it is true that up to the 18th century doctors - all men - could only examine their female patients under certain restrictions. When, however, in the 16th century anatomical researches came to a head and the custom of using public baths took root, corporeality recovered some of its aspects suppressed or neglected under pressure from the Christian Church. While a physician was hardly allowed to touch a body that was living, he could probe into its secrets when it was dead during dissections -, even though a female corpse was more rarely seen on the dissectiontable than a male one. While in the Middle Ages the naked body was one of the symbols of transitoriness or innocence and its representation was not hallmarked by eroticism, during the Renaissance the naked female body, following in the wake of the classical ideal of beauty, was articulated as the symbol of love. Its representation was not "forbidden", although its depiction again came to be censured during the Counter-Reformation. Many centuries separate the anatomical views of antiquity based mainly on animal dissections and today's anatomical science, the beginnings of dissecting practice and a thorough knowledge of the construction of the human body. Contrary to a widely held belief, the Church did not wholly prohibit dissecting in the Middle Ages. Judicial dissections were carried out quite early on and there is, for example, an order dated 1240 (during the reign of Frederick II) to perform a dissection demonstration in Salerno for the benefit of medical students. In fact, the Church only prohibited the desecration of corpses and the trade in them, permitting, from the early 14th century on, the examination - under strict ritual conditions - of the mortal remains of executed individuals in order to satisfy medicine's inquiry into anatomy. Scholastic thought was characterized by the integrity of the outer and the inner, the theory of the doctrine of concentric circles. Hence, in legal terms the opening of the body represented the severest punishment for criminals: human excommunication. These medieval dissections were, however, merely speculative demonstrations that allowed a glimpse of the inside of the human body via their symbolic ritual order within divine jurisdiction, and with uncritical adoption of the tenets of Hippocrates and Galen. The anatomist did not dissect, leaving the job to his assistant, the prosector. It was only with the anatomical demonstrations of Vesalius that the anatomist formulated the findings of his observations on the basis of his first-hand dissecting experience. In the history of both anatomy and anatomical illustrations, the turning point came with a work by the Paduan anatomist Vesalius entitled De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543). Its illustrative woodcuts were created in the great period of demonstrative anatomical figures imbued with aesthetic, philosophical and theological contexts but rooted deeply in ideas that interpreted nature as the outcome of environment, structure and function, with man as God's greatest work of art since antiquity. The Vesalian change was anticipated by the development of printing and a new approach to the production of books. Although its knowledge was still insufficient for the exact representation of the body, anatomy was searching for new means of expression to promote the picture to the rank of a self-contained creation as an aid to the comprehension of the text. The illustrations in anatomical works were often the creations of prominent artists, and gradually the aims of art and medicine became the same. Art helped descriptive anatomy to formulate its material precisely and suggestively, and artists were able to grasp beauty created by divine nature more exactly in their representations of the human body. The observations of the particular revealed the norms and allowed the rendering of general human features. From the mid-16th century onwards, anatomical figures became increasingly accurate, yet preserving their moralising features up to the late 18th century. It was especially the fulllength representations of the bone and muscle structures that lifted strictly medical observations above the level of simple demonstration. Landscape motifs appeared in the pictures, as well as poetic and pathetic postures, divine figures from antique mythology and vanitas motifs referring to the ephemerality of life. The earlier figures petrified in the catatonia of death disappeared; the face of the dissected corpse reflected emotions instead of the reality of death: these corpses move, dig, lean on their elbows, and show off in histrionic poses. The most fascinating creation of nature is an integral part and reflection of the universe via the harmony