Cheselden and His Osteography, 1733 – Anatomy Combined with Style

Art historians Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace write, "Depicting the human body, however apparently neutral or technical, always involves a series of choices and always engages powerful feelings. Historical images of the dissected body range to the most flamboyant multicolored waxes, in which dissected figures take on the roles of expressive actors (as if in their own timeless dramas, down to the ruthlessly restrained engravings in Henry Gray's famous Anatomy film). All the images display what an art historian calls 'style.'"

One of the most intriguing examples of anatomy "with style" is one of the first books to provide a comprehensive and careful depiction of the human skeletal system: Osteography (Osteographia) or Bone Anatomy (Anatomy of Bones). Osteography was created by English anatomist and surgeon William Cheselden and published in 1733.

Humanities professor Allister Neher writes, "Creating a natural representation of a complex object such as the skull is a matter of artifice and convention. The basic trick is to transform the three-dimensional world of experience – alive with light, color and texture – into the two-dimensional world of black-and-white depiction. If this can be achieved without the viewer commenting on the loss, it is an expression of an artist's skill."

To help ensure the accuracy of his drawings, Cheselden used a dark camera, an optical device that projects an object's image onto a surface. In fact, the frontispiece of Osteography shows a scientist looking into a huge, dark, box-like structure used to reproduce the skeletal object with color and perspective preserved. Cheselden's artists, Gerard van der Gucht and Jacob Schijnvoet, then used this projection to create the drawings.

Cheselden wrote, "The actions of all the skeletons and the position of every bone were my own choice. And where anatomy required certain parts to be expressed more distinctly, I always pointed out that the anatomist could not do his work well without giving this attention."

Description of the article image: A figure from Osteography or Anatomy of Bones (1733) by William Cheselden.

Historical figures mentioned in the article: Jacob Schijnvoet (1685–1733), William Cheselden (1688–1752), Gerard van der Gucht (1696–1776)

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