Les images dans l'anatomie naissante

 The Renaissance Studies Program 

“Techné: Intersections of Theory and Practice in Renaissance Culture” Series 

Presents a lecture by 

LYLE MASSEY 

The Epistemic Image: Picturing Knowledge in Early Modern Sciences of the Body 

6:00 p.m., Monday, September 24, 2012 

Maple Room 

Indiana University Union 

First printed in 1543, Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica challenged centuries of assumptions about human anatomy. One reason that the book was so persuasive to generations of physicians and anatomist was that the beautiful, folio-sized plates depicting the dissected body established the very idea of a normative canon of knowledge. Presenting an ideal composite of observations taken from interactions with multiple bodies, the plates embody a Renaissance episteme that Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have called “truth-to-nature.” This approach to representation remained hegemonic until it was challenged first by the Dutch anatomist and surgeon, Govard Bidloo, in the late 17th century, and then by the English man-midwife, William Hunter, in the 18th century. Bidloo and Hunter rejected the very idea of the normative picture and instead published anatomical pictures that focused on the individuated act of dissection and on the hand, as-it-were, of the anatomist himself. This lecture will explore how and why this shift from the normative to the manual illuminates aspects of the relationship between picturing and vision in early modern science. 

Lyle Massey is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine 

This lecture is made possible through the support of the College Arts and Humanities Institute, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost, the Robert and Avis Burke Lecture Series, Department of the History of Art, and the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science. There will be coffee, tea and light refreshments.