Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1566

For Valverde’s work, first published in Spanish in 1556, the illustrations from Vesalius’ Fabrica were copied in part by the Spanish painter and sculptor Gaspar Becerra (1520–1570) and reproduced as engravings by Nicolas Beatrizet, showing the images in reverse. The engravings were copied again by Pieter and Frans Huys for this later edition. Vesalius was not impressed with Valverde’s work, and attacked him as someone ignorant of dissection. Valverde’s muscle man is derived from the eleventh plate in Vesalius’s sequence, shown as the ‘Related item’ below. Vesalius’ backdrop of the Paduan countryside has not been copied, and the figure in Valverde has had his skull cap removed to reveal the brain.

Keynes.P.7.6