Anatomy (art)

“ Artistic Anatomy. The Student’s Manual of Artistic Anatomy. With 25 plates of the bones and surface muscles of the human figure; together with a description of the origin, insertion, and uses of the muscles. By W. J. Muckley, Principal of the Manchester School of Art. Used at the Government School of Art, South Kensington. Price 5s. 6d.
Artistic Anatomy. Elementary Anatomical Studies of the Bones and Muscles, for the use of Students and Schools, from the drawings of J. Flaxman, R.A. Lately used as a Text-book of Anatomy in the Art Schools at South Kensington. 20 plates, with Text, price 2s. ”

“ It is necessary that a painter should be a good anatomist, that in his attitudes and gestures he may be able to design the naked parts of the human frame, according to the just rules of the anatomy of the nerves, bones, and muscles ”

“ It seems as if his object, in every painting of the human figure, were to display his knowledge of anatomy; and the bodies are often twisted and contorted as if to show the enormous development of muscle in the giant limbs. ”

“ In the search for form the knowledge of anatomy, and particularly the bony structures, is of the utmost importance. During the rage for realism and naturalism many hard things were said about the study of anatomy. And certainly, were it to be used to overstep the modesty of nature in these 123respects and to be paraded to the exclusion of the charm and character of life, it would be as well left alone. But if we are to make a drawing that shall express something concrete, we must know something of its structure, whatever it is. ”

“ Thus, anatomy is said to be necessary ‘to represent the bones, muscles tendons, and veins, as they appear on the surface of the human body;’ so that it is to be presumed, that the anatomist, when he has with his knife and instruments laid bare the internal structure of the body, sees at a glance what he did not before see; but that the artist, after poring over them all his life, is blind to the external appearance of veins, muscles, &c., till the seeing what is concealed under the skin enables him for the first time to see what appears through it. ”

“ But I hardly think the case for anatomy needs much stating at the present time. Never let anatomical knowledge tempt you into exaggerated statements of internal structure, unless such exaggeration helps the particular thing you wish to express. In drawing a figure in violent action it might, for instance, be essential to the drawing, whereas in drawing a figure at rest or a portrait, it would certainly be out of place. ”

“ Two other organic sciences, those of anatomy and physiology, have added enormously to our knowledge of animated nature. Anatomy, which is of high practical importance from its relation to surgery, is a science of ancient origin, many important facts concerning it having been discovered by the physicians of old Greece and Rome. This study continued during later centuries, and by the opening of the nineteenth the gross anatomy of the human frame was fairly well known, and many facts in its finer anatomy had been traced. ”

“ As regards anatomy, I am pretty well prepared: and I have, not without some labour, gained a tolerable knowledge of the human frame; for the continual examination of the ancient statues is continually stimulating one to a more perfect understanding of it. In our medico-chirurgical anatomy, little more is in view than an acquaintance with the several parts; and, for this purpose, the sorriest picture of the muscles may serve very well: but in Rome the most exquisite parts would not even be noticed, unless as helping to make a noble and beautiful form. ”

“ The human hand has a language of its own. While the tongue demonstrates the thought through the word, the hand realizes and renders visible the thought through the work. This organ, therefore, by whose fitness of form the mind declares its own entity in nature, by the invention and creation of the thing, which is, as it were, the mind’s autograph, claims a high interest in surgical anatomy ”

“ These proportions are pleasing, and borrowed directly from nature; but they show nothing of that characteristic beauty of physical art, which, in the varied harmony of parts, indicates the capabilities of form. A similar principle regulates the details, which, though brought out with considerable propriety and softness, are yet without precision or anatomical knowledge, especially of internal structure,—the heads of the bones, the insertions and terminations of the muscles, never being correctly indicated. ”

“ Sculptors should attend anatomical dissections; should learn the structure of the human frame, and the appearance of the muscles under the various conditions to which circumstances may subject them. Indeed the study of anatomy is essential to success. ”

“ Yet neither the anatomist of the living soul nor the anatomist of the living body becomes insensible in any appreciable degree to the exigence of his own pains, and the memories of a thousand triumphant operations will not hinder the start and outcry of the greatest of surgeons if you stick an unexpected pin into any part of his anatomy. ”

“ The necessity of knowing, from an artistic point of view, the structure of the human body makes clear the importance we attach, from the same point of view, to the study of the anatomy of animals—that is, the study of comparative anatomy. ”

“ As you contemplate studying this science and have asked to know the necessary studies, I wish to impress it upon your minds that you begin with anatomy, and you end with anatomy, a knowledge of anatomy is all you want or need, as it is all you can use or ever will use in your practice, although you may live one hundred years. ”

“ Therapeutic Sarcognomy, a science often demonstrated and endorsed by able physicians, gives the anatomy not of the physical structure, but of the vital forces of the body and soul as located in every portion of the constitution—a science vastly more important than physical anatomy, as the anatomy of life is more important than the anatomy of death. ”

“ There can be no more striking proof of the divinity of design than by such revelations as anatomical science everywhere manifests in facts such as this—viz., that each organ serves in most cases a double, and in many a triple purpose, in the animal economy. ”

“ Such is anatomy, with its sad yet instructive revelations of the structure of the human frame—so "fearfully and wonderfully made"—wielding in its hand a scalpel which at first seems ruthless and disenchanting as the scythe of death, but which afterwards becomes a key to unlock some of the deepest mysteries, and leads us down whole galleries of wonder. ”

“ Among those which grow lean which is that which grows leanest?
In very strong men which are the muscles which are thickest and most prominent?
In your anatomy you must represent all the stages of the limbs from man's creation to his death, and then till the death of the bone; and which part of him is first decayed and which is preserved the longest.
And in the same way of extreme leanness and extreme fatness.
The divisions of the head (812. 813) .
812.
ANATOMY. There are eleven elementary tissues:— Cartilage, bones, nerves, veins, arteries, fascia, ligament and sinews, skin, muscle and fat. ”

“ The subject of our study, whichever it happen to be, may appear exhausted of all interest, and the promise of valuable novelty, owing to two reasons:—It may be, like descriptive human anatomy, so cold, poor and sterile in its own nature, and so barren of product, that it will be impossible for even the genius of Promethean fire to warm it ”

“ An anatomical illustration enters the understanding straight-forward in a direct passage, and is almost independent of the aid of written language. A picture of form is a proposition which solves itself. ”

“ Fourthly.—That especially in the treatment and conception of the human form, the habit of contemplating its anatomical structure is not only a hindrance, but a degradation; and farther yet, that even the study of the external form of the human body, more exposed than it may be healthily and decently in daily life, has been essentially destructive to every school of art in which it has been practised. ”

“ Sometimes, however, the false arts served indirectly to advance the true. Alchemy led the way to chemistry, and enriched medicine with new remedies, and at least one crotchet of scholastic divinity may be supposed to have done something for the progress of anatomy; for “the skeleton received, perhaps, an adventitious attention in consequence of the popular belief that, in man, some one particular bone existed of an imponderable, incombustible, and indestructible nature, around which, as a nucleus, all other tissues and organs would collect and re-assume their vital actions at the resurrection. ”

“ From this room of anatomy you are conducted to the room of histology, in which the eye is aided by powerful microscopes and made acquainted with the smallest arteries of the human body, which in life are of the greatest known importance, remembering that in the room of histology you are still studying anatomy, and what that machinery can and does execute every day, hour, and minute of life. ”

“ These grow extremely hard as a man advances in years.
Chap. XXXII.—Memorandum to be observed by the Painter.
Note down which muscles and tendons are brought into action by the motion of any member, and when they are hidden. Remember that these remarks are of the greatest importance to painters and sculptors, who profess to study anatomy, and the science of the muscles. Do the same with children, following the different gradations of age from their birth even to decrepitude, describing the changes which the members, and particularly the joints, undergo; which of them grow fat, and which lean. ”

“ I believe you are taught anatomy in our school [Pg 13] more thoroughly than any other school to date, because we want you to carry a living picture of all or any part of the body in your mind as a ready painter carries the picture of the face, scenery, beast or any thing he wishes to represent by his brush. He would only be a waster of time and paint and make a daub that would disgust any one who would employ him. ”

“ The finest and most intricate parts of the human frame are delineated and traced with a distinctness and exactitude hardly to be conceived, and the slightest ramifications of the nerves and vessels have been followed with a clearness and accuracy rarely seen in the most exact preparations of the best cabinets of anatomy. ”

“ Remove by degrees all the parts of the front of a man in making your dissection, till you come to the bones. Description of the parts of the bust and of their motions.
808.
Give the anatomy of the leg up to the hip, in all views and in every action and in every state; veins, arteries, nerves, sinews and muscles, skin and bones; then the bones in sections to show the thickness of the bones. ”

“ Again having seen human bodies dissected one knows how the bones lie, and the muscles and sinews, and all the order and conditions of anatomy, so that it is possible with greater security and more correctness to place the limbs and arrange the muscles of the body in the figures we draw. ”

“ He had illustrated them by arguments and he had freed them from objections of the most learned and skilful Anatomists. He then proceeds so modestly that it is difficult to realise how great an innovation he was really making when he [190] says, “I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections, not from the positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.” ”

“ Important as is the study of anatomy as a foundation upon which to build up a scientific and practical knowledge, we do not wish to overlook the undisputed fact, that the skeleton bears but an indistinct resemblance to the outside, the muscles and flesh formation having much to do with that. ”

“ Human anatomy then deals with the form and structure of the human body, and describes how the different parts and organs are arranged, as revealed by observation, by dissection, and by the microscope. ”

“ Anatomy studies the organism in space. Physiology studies it also in time. After the study of form and composition follows close that of action, and this leads us along back to the first moment of the germ, and forward to the resolution of the living frame into its lifeless elements. In this way Anatomy, or rather that branch of it which we call Histology, has become inseparably blended with the study of function. ”

“ EVER since the study of human anatomy has attracted any attention, variations in the arrangement of the different structures of the body have been noticed. For many centuries, the signification of these variations was not understood ”

“ The difficulty of obtaining material relating to the anatomy of the soft parts of the body has had the effect that this portion of the description of the anatomy of man has received very slight attention. ”

“ Minute anatomy has not yet attained a degree of perfection competent to settle a point of such subtility.”
Dr. C. afterward goes on to prove that no single nerve, or organ, can perform two distinct functions, but that each is capable of one mode of action, and no more; that between a nerve, a muscle, and a gland, the only difference known to exist, is that of organization; and that if they are organized alike, and endowed with life, their properties will be similar, and they will act in the same way. ”

“ So artificial is the arrangement throughout the body, that there is not a single vein without valves and sluices, making a passage for the blood. From the roots of the hair to the toes, all is art, design, cause, and effect. ”

“ Of what use is a knowledge of anatomy to man if he overlooks cause and effect in the results obtained by the machinery that anatomy should teach? He finds each part connected to all others with the wisdom that has given a set of plans and specifications that are without a flaw or omission. ”