Albinus's Tables of the Human Body 1747 – The Most Beautiful Anatomical Depictions of Their Time

Historian Andrew Cunningham wrote: "Bernhard Siegfried Albinus's aim was to create the most beautiful anatomical plates ever seen, and his obsessive perfectionism and intense concern for accuracy of depiction caused many problems and delays. He wanted to depict the 'ideal' human body. No anatomical illustration project could have had more time, thought, labor, art, and money devoted to it."

Albinus was a genius. He began his medical education at Leiden University in the Netherlands at age 12 and received his medical degree in 1719 without taking examinations. At age 24, he was awarded a professorship in anatomy and soon became renowned as one of Europe's most talented anatomy teachers. He is best known for his monumental illustrated work, published in Leiden in 1747, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani (Tables and Muscles of the Human Body). When creating the plates, Albinus worked continuously with the artist Jan Wandelaar. According to Albinus, Wandelaar was "instructed, directed, and entirely managed by me, as if he were an instrument in my hands, and I made the figures myself." Opposite each engraving in the plates was a page labeling all anatomical features of interest.

To ensure the plates' accuracy, Albinus and Wandelaar placed nets in front of the specimens. The nets formed a grid pattern to guide the drawing. Albinus also held skeletons in lifelike poses with strings and had a man stand naked in the same position to make visual comparisons. Wandelaar added various landscape backgrounds to enhance the works' "three-dimensional reality".

Historian Charles Singer writes that "the illustrations, with their finely worked ornamental backgrounds, were intended for artists and doctors alike, and no better work of this kind has ever been accomplished." Historian Londa Schiebinger writes: "Albinus produced definitive examples of the human skeleton that remained unmatched for at least three-quarters of a century".

Description of the article's illustration: Albinus's skeletal figure depicted in front of a rhinoceros drawn by Wandelaar from the first living rhinoceros in Europe, which arrived at the Amsterdam zoo in 1741.

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Jan Wandelaar (1690–1759), Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697–1770)

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