Violence and the Genesis of the Anatomical Image

Nothing excited early modern anatomists more than touching a beating heart. In his 1543 treatise, Andreas Vesalius boasts that he was able to feel life itself through the membranes of a heart belonging to a man who had just been executed, a comment that appears near the woodcut of a person being dissected while still hanging from the gallows. In this highly original book, Rose Marie San Juan confronts the question of violence in the making of the early modern anatomical image. Engaging the ways in which power operated in early modern anatomical images in Europe and, to a lesser extent, its colonies, San Juan examines literal violence upon bodies in a range of civic, religious, pedagogical, and "exploratory" contexts. She then works through the question of how bodies were thought to be constituted-systemic or piecemeal, singular or collective-and how gender determines this question of constitution. In confronting the issue of violence in the making of the anatomical image, San Juan explores not only how violence transformed the body into a powerful and troubling double but also how this kind of body permeated attempts to produce knowledge about the world at large. Provocative and challenging, this book will be of significant interest to scholars across fields in early modern studies, including art history and visual culture, science, and medicine.

About the author

Rose Marie San Juan is Professor of Art History at University College London. She is the author of several books, including most recently Film and Urban Space: Critical Possibilities and Vertiginous Mirrors: The Animation of the Visual Image and Early Modern Travel.

Product details

• Authors: Rose Marie San Juan, Rose Marie (University College London) San Juan, San Juan Rose Marie
• Publisher: University Presses
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.04.2025
• EAN: 9780271093369
• ISBN: 978-0-271-09336-9
• Dimensions: 203 mm x 254 mm x 13 mm
• Weight: 748 g
• Illustrations: Raster,schwarz-weiss, Raster, farbig
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Europe, ART / Subjects & Themes / Human Figure, HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century, HISTORY / Modern / 17th Century, History of Art, Renaissance art, History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800, Human figures depicted in art, ART / History / European / Renaissance, ART / History / European / Baroque & Rococo