Jacopo Berengario da Carpi Isagoge breves in anatomiam humani corporis, Strasbourg: H. Sybod, 1530, R5 recto, woodcut, leaf height 14.5 cm, 5000.e.52.

Jacopo Berengario (1460-1530) learnt anatomy and dissection from his father who was a surgeon, and spent his youth at the court of the Pio family at Carpi, where he met the humanist printer Aldus Manutius. Berengario taught surgery at Bologna after studying there, and had a successful and lucrative practice, treating dignitaries such as Lorenzo de’ Medici. He wrote an extended commentary on Mondino de’ Luzzi’s (c. 1275-1326) Anatomia (1521) which formed the basis of his own short manual on human anatomy, Short Introduction to the anatomy of the human body (1522), intended for students at the beginning of their medical studies.

Berengario was a keen collector of works of art: he owned a silver jug made by Benvenuto Cellini and a ‘Saint John in the Desert’ by Raphael, which he received from his patient Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, in lieu of a fee. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the Short introduction included woodcuts that were reminiscent of art works, such as a crucified Christ. This 1530 edition is based on the 1523 edition, with poorly copied illustrations that omitted the background landscape in the earlier edition.

This woodcut shows the anterior view of the muscles after the skin has been flayed. The pose in the original edition was reminiscent of Michelangelo’s David, with a rope indicating the noose, a reference to the cadavers of hanged criminals used in dissections. Demand for bodies for dissection meant that bodies from poor or foreign families who could not afford funeral costs were also used; professors of medicine were responsible for the proper burial of the anatomized bodies. This figure was intended by Berengario to aid physicians in distinguishing the heads and middle parts of the muscles so that they could conduct surgical procedures without damaging tendons. It is small and poorly cut, so that few of the anatomical details could be studied closely.