As students at the RHA School will shortly access 21st-century teaching aids, their Professor of Anatomy Clive Lee looks at the changing nature of knowledge translation between artists and anatomists.
Artists create, anatomists dissect. We anatomise or cut open and separate the parts of the body in order to understand its structure. Yet both artists and anatomists see and observe, both professions require manual dexterity and the histories of both are closely intertwined.
Anatomy can be the subject of art. Dutch painters of the 17th century created a series of anatomy lessons featuring the newly emerged professional class of surgeons and their specimens. We might begin with The Osteology Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz, painted by Thomas de Keyser in 1619 (Fig 2), before studying the flexors of the forearm with Dr Tulp (1632) (Fig 1) and finally, in 2nd Med as it were, the meninges of the brain with Dr Deyman (1656), both painted by Rembrandt van Rijn. More recently, Damien Hirst has repeatedly used anatomical specimens — embalmed cows and sharks — in his work.
Janet Mullarney’s sculptures perform as metaphors, not portraits, writes Cliodhna Shaffrey