The 18th-century Enlightenment is the beginning of the modern world and publications on human anatomy changed the way artists understood their place in the world. Check out these examples of life-changing images brought to you by prints in books!
In s2e31 of Platemark’s History of Prints series, Tru and Ann continue their discussion of the Enlightenment. This time they look at several publications that put forward new discoveries about human anatomy: William Hunter’s The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus’ Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani, and Jacques Fabien Gautier d’Agoty’s Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle. They conclude with Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, a 17 volume tome that attempted to define and codify all of human knowledge.
At the end of the episode, Ann and Tru wax philosophical about how incredible this blossoming of human knowledge is, and how talking about it makes each of them think about our place as humans on the planet. It gets a bit deep, but worthwhile.
