Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, Basel: ex. off. J. Oporini, 1543, p. 164, woodcut, leaf height 43 cm, N*.1.2(A).

This is the second image of the skeleton, viewed from the side with legs crossed, leaning on a sarcophagus. On the top of the sarcophagus are the underside of the skull, two ossicles of the ear and the hyoid bone, structures that cannot be readily seen in any of the full-figure views of the skeleton.

On the side of the sarcophagus is written: ‘one lives on by the spirit, the rest shall belong to death’. This is a line from an elegy believed at the time to be by Virgil on the death of his patron Maecenas. This elegy was commonly included in the works of Virgil published in this period, but it cannot have been by Virgil, since he died before Maecenas. It was a phrase used also by the artist Albrecht Dürer in his engraving portrait of Willibald Pirckheimer, and deployed later by the astronomer Tycho Brahe as a decoration to one of his instruments.