Sales catalogue 12: R. Lier & Co.

Date:
1929
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/40/8
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 12: R. Lier & Co. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/124 (page 9)
    COMPLETE SERIES OF THREE ANATOMICAL FUGITIVE SHEETS, SHOWING ADAM, EVE AND SKELETON, WITTENBERG, 1573. 13. We are offering here a complete series of three absolutely undescribed and, as it seems, entirely unknown anatomical fu- gitive sheets, showing a man, a woman and a skeleton, dated Wittenberg 1573. Man and woman belong certainly to the so-called Adam and Eve series (confer the preceding item). The extreme importance and the most apparently unique state of the sheets here offered, may be fully realized by considering how scarce even single sheets from these times prove to be. This importance is highly augmented by the fact, that we are offering three sheets belonging to each other, and all three in a_ most splendid and admirable condition with all their superimposed flaps. It is a very remarkable fact, as the very few, nearly undiscoverable sheets being found to-day, are without exception in a very bad condition. Having studied most carefully all respective bibliographers, we are able to state, that the real existence of the above series is absolutely unknown to them. I: Male figure. Tabula exhibens insigniora maris viscera. Size 32x 37,5 cm. Folding sheet showing to the left the explanatory text in Latin, to the right the coloured woodcut of a sitting naked man holding in the right hand the enlarged anatomical figure of the eye. Front wall of the trunk can be folded upward. Three superimposed flaps showing different pictures of the various organs can be lifted up separately. They represent the ‘ ventricu- lum, intestina, vena cava, rami, vena seminalis, pulmones, cor ”’ etc. The whole figure surrounded by 7 figures of the stomach, brain, arteries, etc. The main figure has the features of VESALIUS; the hair line is continous with the beard and the upper lip is covered with a mustache (Figure 10 of Dr. Crummer’s treatise). ‘“ Tt has been suggested that the features of Vesalius were placed upon these sheets as a guarantee of the correctness of the anatomy represented but the visceral anatomy shown on the three superim- posed flaps has many features definitely pre-Vesalian ’’? (Crummer). The male figure, attributed by Dr. de Lint to Schdnborn, 1590 shows features of Vesalius most different from those of our sheet (see Crummer, p. 209). — Without date or printer’s name. Confer Dr. Crummer’s Classe Five, the male figure alone. Both sheets Prices in Swiss Francs