Michelangelo used images of human anatomy throughout his work. Nearly the entire body is there, albeit in pieces. Michelangelo began his career with extensive dissections of human corpses and ended his career talking about illustrating an anatomy book. He was hinting, as the anatomy was already there in his art. Perhaps at the time he made the art, he worried that it was too dangerous for his own person to reveal the secular anatomy theme. At the time, Renaissance scholars were studying human anatomy and trying to work out how the organs functioned. Many of them, like Leonardo da Vinci and Vesalius, self-published using their art. Herein are some of Michelangelo’s “self-published” contributions, human anatomy in his art and self-portraits, in the Sistine Chapel, paintings, and sculpture.
"Explores the imitation of Michelangelo by three artists, Perino del Vaga, Daniele da Volterra, and Pellegrino Tibaldi, from the 1520s to the time around Michelangelo's death in 1564. Argues that his Mannerist followers applied imitation to identify with and/or create ironical distance from to the older artist"--Provided by publisher.
By following steps by which Michelangelo arrived at his inventions, the author questions conventional notions of spotaneity as a function of genius. Rather, she explores the idea of drawing as a mode of thinking, using its evidence to reconstruct the process by which Michelangelo arrived at new ideas.
This illustrated volume examines the different methods artists and anatomists used to reveal the inner workings of the human body and evoke wonder in its form. For centuries, anatomy was a fundamental component of artistic training, as artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo sought to skillfully portray the human form. In Europe, illustrations that captured the complex structure of the body—spectacularly realized by anatomists, artists, and printmakers in early atlases such as Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septem of 1543—found an audience with both medical practitioners and artists. Flesh and Bones examines the inventive ways anatomy has been presented from the sixteenth through the twenty-first century, including an animated corpse displaying its own body for study, anatomized antique sculpture, spectacular life-size prints, delicate paper flaps, and 3-D stereoscopic photographs. Drawn primarily from the vast holdings of the Getty Research Institute, the over 150 striking images, which range in media from woodcut to neon, reveal the uncanny beauty of the human body under the skin
Known as the "century of anatomy," the 16th century in Italy saw an explosion of studies and treatises on the discipline. Medical science advanced at an unprecedented rate, and physicians published on anatomy as never before. Simultaneously, many of the period's most prominent artists--including Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence, Raphael in Rome, and Rubens working in Italy--turned to the study of anatomy to inform their own drawings and sculptures, some by working directly with anatomists and helping to illustrate their discoveries. The result was a rich corpus of art objects detailing the workings of the human body with an accuracy never before attained. "Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy "examines this crossroads between art and science, showing how the attempt to depict bone structure, musculature, and our inner workings--both in drawings and in three dimensions--constituted an important step forward in how the body was represented in art. While already remarkable at the time of their original publication, the anatomical drawings by 16th-century masters have even foreshadowed developments in anatomic studies in modern times.
"Studies Raphael's images of supernatural phenomena, including apparitions and prophetic visions, within their contemporary artistic and religious contexts. Asks how a fundamentally naturalistic style of painting like that of the Italian Renaissance can accommodate representations of the supernatural without self-contradiction"--Provided by publisher.