Contents
- Title
- Title Page
- Organization of Contents
- Colophon
- Size & Format
- Collation
- Page Layout & Typography
- Folliation & Pagination
- Type
- Color Printing & Rubrication
- Decoration & Illustration
- Illumination & Painting
- Binding
- Endleaves & Flyleaves
The title of the work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem is commonly translated as On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books, but in actuality there is no consensus on the correct translation of the word fabrica, which could be translated as "structure," "fabric," or "workings" (O'Malley, 1964). Vesalius, who wrote fluently in Latin, was surely familiar with the multiple senses of the word. This small confusion which greets us before we even begin the work proper hints at the richness and complexity of the Humanist Latin that Vesalius uses throughout. This is no work done in the plain style meant for the casual reader. It is full of complex, periodic sentences and literary allusions; it is an intellectual undertaking to read, just as it was a major intellectual undertaking to compose (Nutton, 2003). In the title, we get a sense of the intended audience for the Fabrica. This was a book for European intellectuals and wealthy ones at that who could afford a book that in the quality of its production and richness of illustration was as much work of art as scientific text.
Title Page
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C.D. O'Malley (1964), in his essential biography, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564 cautions against reading too much into the images' symbolism since Vesalius "was always concerned with facts rather than symbols" (p. 140). But, it is difficult to look at the title page and not find the images fraught with meaning beyond what is simply represented. Take for example the skeleton that dominates the scene. Vesalius and the dissection should be the focal point of the title page, but the eye is inexorably drawn to the skeleton rising above Vesalius, the cadaver and the sea of flesh presented by the spectators. On the one hand, the skeleton speaks to Vesalius's insistence that the study of anatomy should begin with the study of the skeleton (Carlino, 1999). But it is also a specter of death that seems to mock the earthy scene it looks down upon with all its fragile flesh and blood that is destined to become no more than the cadaver Vesalius works on.
The title page is rife with anti-Galen sentiment, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it post-Galen sentiment for Vesalius maintains respect for Galen throughout the Fabrica and indeed acknowledges the debt he owes Galen. But, Vesalius is proposing a new order for the study of anatomy and this is reflected in the imagery. There are the unruly animals in the foreground, the barking dog on the lower-right and the monkey on the left biting a man's hand, that some scholars read as symbolic of the inferiority of the nonhuman sources Galen worked with (Saunders & O'Malley, 1950). Then there are the robed Classical figures in the front who stand in rapt attention at Galen's demonstration. The bearded one on the right who seems to be admonishing the man with the barking dog is often presumed to be the figure of Galen himself, paying tribute to Vesalius by encouraging his fellow spectators to be quiet and pay attention (Carlino, 1999).
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| Close-up of Title Page |
Organization of the Contents
As the title of the Fabrica suggests, the work is organized into seven books. The seven books follow Vesalius's order of dissection. Book I describes the bones and cartilage, which Vesalius chose as his starting point because bones were typically the most readily available parts of the human body to study. And, bones formed the foundation on which everything else rested. Book II describes the muscles and ligaments, III the blood vessels and arteries, IV the nervous system, V the internal organs responsible for nutrition and generation, VI the heart, lungs and associated organs, and VII the brain.
Vesalius's order of dissection broke with the traditional Medieval order (O'Malley, 1964) and followed a similar organization to Galen's Anatomical Procedures, which "made for easier demonstration of Galenic error. At the same time, it must be emphasized that Vesalius's purpose was not fundamentally to make adverse criticism of Galen but rather to correct, expand, and add" (O'Malley, 1964, p. 150).
Colophon
Size & Format
The Fabrica is a large folio printed on demy paper, standing about 43 centimeters tall and 28 centimeters wide. In this case, both senses of the word folio apply. The book is oversized (i.e. greater than 15 inches tall), and it is also comprised of single sheets of paper folded just once. The size is in keeping with the quality, luxury and expense of the work, and Vesalius preferred the use of large pages because they showed the illustrations better (O'Malley, 1964).
Vesalius had a digest of the Fabrica printed, which is known as the Epitome (full title, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librorum Epitome) with students in mind. It was cheaper, condensed, heavier on images than text, and required little or no previous knowledge of anatomy to appreciate. It was actually larger in size, taller by a whole six centimeters than the Fabrica, again to better show the illustrations. To Vesalius's great disappointment, the Epitome proved extraordinarily popular, far more so than the Fabrica and today, a copy of the Epitome is much more difficult to find than a copy of the Fabrica, indicating its greater practical use (O'Malley, 1964).
Collation
The book is collated in gatherings of six leaves or twelve pages created by joining three folios.
Page Layout & Typography
One of the innovations of the Fabrica is the way text and images make up an integrated whole. Today, it is not out of the ordinary for an image or illustration to play a role in supporting an author's argument. But at the time that the Fabrica was written, this practice simply wasn't done. Texts were often illustrated, but the illustrations were not integral to the author's argument. The Fabrica though, relies on images as often as on text to make a point or to demonstrate a concept. This effect is achieved in large part through the work's layout and typography.
The Fabrica has wide, spacious margins. The reasons for these are only partly aesthetic. The wide margins do indicate the luxury and the quality of the book; Vesalius didn't want to cut corners by squeezing as much text on the page as possible. But the other reason for the wide margins is functional. Vesalius used the margins for complex and extensive annotation of the text, which he explained to Oporinus in the following way:
In the continuous course of the text, nowhere interrupted by references to figures, you will employ the small type which printers call "superlinear" to indicate those annotations which I have added to the inner margin, not so much through industry as through labor and tedium, in order that they might serve as a commentary for the reader and indicate in whatever plate the part under discussion may be seen; on the other hand, the annotations seen on the outer margin present to some extent a summary of the discussion. (qtd. in Saunders & O'Malley, 1950, p. 46)Through this system of annotation, which used typography and layout in novel ways, Vesalius united text and illustration, enabling Vesalius to direct the reader's gaze as much as his thoughts, pushing the reader, as Nutton (2003) puts it, "to become the observer if he is to gain a full understanding of the body" (par. 82). It is an early example of hypertext.
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| Example of Marginal Notations |
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| Example of Image Notations (which are keyed to the marginal notations) |
Foliation & Pagination
The Fabrica contains 355 leaves and 2 fold-out pages for oversized illustrations. It is foliated A-Z6, aa-ll6, mm8, whereby each gathering is given a successive letter of the alphabet, which is begun again as aa, bb, cc, etc. once Z is reached. Each leaf is numbered 1-6, although the final gathering appears to have 8 leaves.
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| Signature Register |
The pages are numbered in the upper right and left-hand side of the pages in Arabic numerals. There is an error in pagination that begins after page 312 and continues for 180 pages in which the numbers are a hundred less than they should be. This suggests that several crews of compositors worked on setting the type (O'Malley, 1964), which would make sense given the number of pages the work contains. This is one of the few printing errors Oporinus made.
Type
The work is done primarily in Roman and italic types. Saunders and O'Malley (1950) note that Oporinus chose a roman type that was more delicate, avoiding the heavy version that was typical of Basel printers. The italic was known as "Basel italic" (O'Malley, 1964) and was one of the more popular italics used in Europe. The text also includes some Greek and Hebrew types since parts of the work are in these languages. Finally, Oporinus used a size known as Grobe Texte, which would be the equivalent of our 16 point font and of which, 5,000 characters could fit on a page.
Color Printing & Rubrication
The Fabrica has neither color printing nor rubrication, which would be consistent with the times. Rubrication of printed books was still done occasionally in the 16th century, but the practice was becoming less and less common. Methods for color printing existed, but were not common.
Decoration & Illustration
The Fabrica is most famous for its woodblock illustrations. They represent a watershed moment in medical history, accurately visualizing the human body for the first time (Jones, 1943). It is amazing to think that prior to the Fabrica human anatomy and medical texts were minimally illustrated. The Fabrica fundamentally changed the way the body was presented and taught in print, and the illustrations were widely plagiarized and imitated for a century or more following its publication (Nutton, 2003). The Fabrica contains the following illustrations:
- Pictorial title
- Author's portrait
- Printer's device
- 7 large, 186 mid-sized, and 22 small woodcut initials
- 3 full-page skeletons
- 14 full-page muscle-men
- 5 large diagrams of veins and nerves
- 10 mid-sized views of the abdomen
- 2 mid-sized views of the thorax
- 13 mid-sized views of the skull and brain
- Numerous smaller views of bones, organs and anatomical parts
Whatever Vesalius's reasons, in the absence of an acknowledgement in the book, there is so little other evidence available that it is impossible to make assertions about the artists with any kind of certainty. They are believed to have belonged to the workshop of Titian, the great Renaissance painter based on the quality and style of the work. Titian's workshop was in Padua and it stands to reason that Vesalius would employ the best artists he had access to. We do know that the woodblocks of the images were cut in Venice by a block cutter of great skill, although the identity of this cutter is unknown (O'Malley, 1964). Amazingly, the woodblocks were preserved and available for study until relatively recently; they were destroyed in the Allied bombings of Munich during WWII. For this reason, we know that the woodblocks were made of pear wood that was treated with hot linseed oil. This treatment changed the texture and elasticity of the wood's surface, allowing for the high degree of intricacy, delicacy and shading that is evident in the illustrations (O'Malley, 1964).
When thinking about the artistic merit of the Fabrica, the dramatic and exquisitely detailed full-body anatomical illustrations rightly receive most of the attention, but the historiated initials that appear frequently throughout the text are an achievement in their own right. They depict putti and dwarves performing various duties related to anatomical study, often the more unsavory ones such as vivisection and grave robbing. The images often served as visual footnotes to the text. They are bizarre, whimsical and a little grotesque and one wonders at the reason Vesalius chose them for his great work. Are they simply to hold the reader's attention? To lighten the mood, a kind of gallow's humor in the presence of so much death? Some hint at Vesalius's personality?
Illumination & Painting
Only one known copy of the Fabrica is illuminated and painted, the copy that Vesalius presented to Emperor Charles V, to whom the Fabrica is dedicated. It is the copy mentioned earlier in this study that sold at auction for over 1.6 million dollars and looking at the title page in full color, we can see that the expense was justified. Each one of the woodcut illustrations and initials in this copy was hand-painted by a miniaturist in full, vibrant color with highlights done in liquid silver and gold. The miniaturist clearly had superior skill but unfortunately, his identity remains a mystery.  |
| This image appears courtesy of the New York Public Library. |
The presentation copy of the Fabrica is now housed in the Rare Book Collection of the New York Public Library. It was given to the library as an anonymous donation. Previously, it had belonged to a well-known collector, Haskell F. Norman (1991) who described his 1963 discovery and purchase of the presentation copy, which had been long-lost and presumed destroyed, as "the most exciting moment in my bibliophilic experience" (par. 27)
Binding
In the 16th century, binding was still typically done after the purchase of the book so bindings vary from book to book. For example, the presentation copy that Vesalius had made up for the emperor was bound in silk velvet over pasteboard (Christie's, 1998), but probably, a more typical binding would have been calfskin or pigskin over pasteboard, with varying degree of decoration such as stamping and tooling depending on how much the owner was willing to spend.
Endleaves & Flyleaves
We can assume the inclusion of endleaves and flyleaves in the Fabrica as this was common practice of the time. Browsing the auction catalogs for entries about various copies, it isn't unusual to find copies with flyleaves and/or endleaves in varying states of repair, although it isn't always certain if those were contemporary with the original publication.
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