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

body humours -, women have less heat than men. This results in the stunted development of their sex organs, which remain inside their bodies. The vagina corresponds to the penis, the womb to the scrotum. Though stressing the opposition between the mentioned organs, Aristotle did not question the theory of unisexuality. The antique concept of unisex lived on in the Middle Ages; hence when anatomical researches began, the female sex did not exist ontologically. Although it argued with the ex cathedra statements of the classical authors, post-Vesalian anatomy still refrained from revising the earlier medical position on the female genitalia. The anatomists did not question the evidence of corresponding female and male sex organs even after the opening up of the body, demonstrating agreement with it, as in two female torsos in Vesalius's Fabrica. Rare exceptions were the anatomical pictures showing full-length female figures also broken down to bone system and muscles. Mention must be made here of the Remmelin plates exhibiting extraordinary technical execution.

5 The three plates include foldouts of the first couple, Adam and Eve, demonstrating the topographic construction of the human body. The set interprets man as part of the universe in harmony with the principles of interaction between the body and the zodiac, the microand the macrocosmos. Under the old metaphoric traditions, the cosmos integrated in the human body represented a cyclical order encompassing all fields of life. This is why the womb heavy with child as the guarantee for the survival of the universal order could be assigned an emphatic place in the plates. While from the mid-17th century the target of research increasingly shifted towards the discovery of individual differences anticipating the birth of pathological anatomy, the anatomical figures in which the face still played a role could not be severed from the surcharge of connotations added to the descriptive observations and more and more frequently came into confrontation with the often cruelly natural, naked reality of the body. The clash between beauty and reality threw into deeper relief the Baroque ideas of pathetic dramatism, pious rhetorical argumentation and histrionic bizarreness. Slowly the passionate representations underwent some change, the body became lifeless, and though the faces did not lose the expression of emotions, they mirrored agony and suffering most frequently. One of the finest Baroque anatomical atlases is the Dutch anatomist Bidloo's Anatómia corporis humant, whose plates of peculiar atmosphere were often copied and used by illustrators. In 1687, Cowper published the engravings under his own name, and although it stirred charges of plagiarism, the Latin translation of the atlas (Anatómia corporum humanorum... Ultrajecti, apud Nicolaum Muntendam, 1750) featured Cowper's name again. In addition to the female corpse's abdominal section, the engravings also show the back and the exposed chest cavity, and include new idealising elements (e.g. drapery over the genitals) that stress the beauty of the female body on the one hand and details that emphasise the reality of death (e.g. the rope around the neck holding the corpse in place) on the other. The naked female body could only be represented with comparative puritanism. The direction of anatomical researches also changed. The topography of larger units gave way to the exploration of ever smaller details that were harder to access, such as the circulatory and nervous systems. The figures now aimed to present a specific organ or area, facilitating the appearance of pathological anatomy as a new discipline laying emphasis on individual specificities instead of idealized general features. Unlike earlier when medical and artistic anatomical works were not sharply differentiated, now separate anatomical works concentrating on human muscles, proportions, movements, and so on were produced for students of art. In the second half of the 18th century, artificial preparations were produced to satisfy the demands of the students of medicine and art, since there was a "shortage of corpses". In addition to natural preparations conserved using newer and newer techniques, there were anatomical sculptures of wood, ivory and wax that had already been made for some time. Recovering the initiative from the Dutch and French anatomists who developed a mastery of anatómia naturalis, workshops in Florence and Bologna developed the wax sculpture to unprecedented heights. The most famous workshop was the one founded in Florence in 1775, where wax sculptors of European renown such as Susini and Mascagni worked under the leadership of the anatomist Felice Fontana. Ranging from small organs to fulllength anatomical figures, thousands of wax models praise the co-ordinated work of anatomists and artists. Sculptors not only made precise copies of human organs, but also channelled the beauty and the aestheticizing, gentle passion of Neoclassicist artistic taste into the waxworks. On his visit to Florence in 1780, Joseph II also ordered Fontana to deliver a collection of 1192 pieces to the Military Medical and Surgical Academy in Vienna (these were completed in 1786), from which he donated a smaller collection to the Medical Faculty in Pest in 1789, including a full-length figure demonstrating the lymphatic system of the female body whose beauty deservedly earned it the epi-