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Leonardo's interest in human anatomy developed from the studies he made for his paintings which he felt essential so as to depict accurately the proportion and movement of the human body as perfectly and realistically as possible. He wishes to understand the inner structure of the body including how the bones, muscles and sinews functioned together. With time, his interest in human anatomy formed an independent branch of research, and he devoted much time to it.
In the Holoscenario, visual reference is made to the Maestro's interest by the presence of a skeleton - see the two screenshots below. As one of the ways of indicating the passage of time, in [
79 Concerning Flight], the skeleton looks the worse for wear. In Renaissance times, of course, the skeleton would have been real.
[75 Scientific Method]
| Leonardo's famous painting "The Annunciation" can be seen, standing on end with only part showing, in the above and below screenshots. |   |
[79 Concerning Flight]
His concept of the human organism was as a wonderfully constructed machines whose functions he sought to comprehend. His curiosity was only partly satisfied by the writings of the Classical physician named Galen. Galen, who was an a Greek anatomist (lived c.130-200) had formed theories about the human bodies which theories formed the basis of European medicine until the Renaissance and the studies of people like Leonardo.
In the years after 1506 Leonardo worked together with the anatomy professor Marcantonio della Torre. But Leonardo had a horror of the dissection work involved - it should be remembered that at this time there were no suitable preserving fluids and Leonardo, who worked by making meticulous drawings of his observations, had to work quickly. He also had to work fairly secretly because the Church tended to consider human dissection to be heretical. Indeed, later on the Pope forbade his dissection work, hampering the Maestro and reducing his studies to that of dissected animals. There is the story that at one point Leonardo had it circulated that he had left Italy altogether and was travelling in exotic places in the East, and that he maintained the fiction by writing letters to people describing his adventures there, but that meanwhile he had actually not travelled at all and was secretly studying human anatomy.
from Source Bucholz
In addition, Leonardo realised that the subject required some medical knowledge:
from Source Bucholz
Leonardo's drawings included cross-sections, details and views never before seen, and were accompanied by copious notes in his usual mirror-handwriting. Being left-handed, Leonardo would have found it easier to write like that to avoid smudging the ink. Personally I believe, and this is no doubt a common speculation, that in an age when only some people could read and write and when mirrors were not readily available, Leonardo's mirror writing also afforded his notes more security than we might realise since nowadays mirrors (and perfect ones) are readily available and all but a tiny minority are literate. This is also bearing in mind the fact that in those days plagiarism did not have legal force the way it does in modern times. In particular, his anatomical Leonardo's studies and subsequent theories would have been considered heretical by the Church. In addition, he did not want to publicise his invention of an underwater contraption (the forerunner of the modern submarine) for fear that it would be used in war, a fear which was to prove posthumously correct with the invention of the modern submarine. At that time, Church dignitaries were ever too willing to act as arbitrary censors and indeed felt it their duty. Some of Leonardo's ambiguously erotic drawings were found and destroyed by a priest after his death.
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1489. Pen, ink and black chalk on paper, 188 x 134 mm, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England. |
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Shoulder. At the top right is a diagram of the right shoulder in which Leonardo has reduced the muscles to a cord representing the direction of force of each muscle. He thus made it clear how the muscle system works in a way that cannot be seen in nature.
1510-11. Black chalk, pen and ink on paper, 289 x 199 mm, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England. |
Giorgio Vasari, the noted art historian and whom Janeway mentions briefly in [79 Concerning Flight], reported: "Leonardo then applied himself, even more assiduously, to the study of human anatomy, ... [and] he did meticulous drawings in red chalk and pen of bodies he had dissected himself. He showed all the bone structure, adding in order all the sinews and covering them with the muscles: the first attached to the skeleton, the second that hold it firm and the third that move it. In the various sections he wrote his observations in puzzling characters (written in reverse with the left hand)..."
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1510. Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England. |
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Woman's torso. Date unknown. Drawing, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy. |
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Torso and arms. Date unknown. Drawing, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy. |
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Studies of the arm showing the movements made by the biceps, c. 1510. |
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Studies of the bones of the feet, c. 1510. |
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Human embryo. The sheet includes studies from a number of years. The note "book on water to Mr. Marcho Ant" refers to the anatomical expert Marcantonio della Torre. Leonardo did not dissect a human body for this drawing of the embryo in the womb, but transferred knowledge he had gained from dissecting pregnant cows and, unscientifically, allowed his drawing to be influenced by those observations. To dissect a pregnant body could have opened Leonardo to accusations of witchcraft - see "The Hammer Of Witches" of 1487, the influential judiciary's guide to the proper pursuit, interrogation, trial and punishment of witches.
1509-14. Black and red chalk, pen and ink wash on paper, 305 x 220 mm. Royal Library, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England. |
The collaboration with della Torre ended in 1511 with della Torre's death in Pisa from plague. After Pope Leo X (brother of his then patron Guiliano de'Medici) forbade Leonardo to carry out further human dissection, the Maestro used ox hearts to continue with his studies of the human circulatory system.
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