Walther Hermann Ryff, Omnium humani corporis partium descriptio seu ut vocant anatomia, Strasbourg: ex officina libraria Balthassari Pistoris et Balthassar Beck, 1541, D[1r], woodcut, leaf height, 30.8 cm, N*.3.17(B).

In 1538, a year after he became professor at Padua, Vesalius published six anatomical sheets, or Tabulae anatomicae (three of the skeleton, one each of the portal, caval and arterial vessels), now very rare. These, along with images from Dryander’s Anatomia, were copied in this work, A description, or anatomy (as they say), of all the parts of the human body by Walther Hermann Ryff, known for pirating publications. Just as Vesalius had intended his Anatomical tables to accompany the anatomical textbook of his former teacher, Johann Guinterius’s Four books on anatomical instruction, according to Galen (which Vesalius had revised and edited in 1538), so too Ryff suggested that these images should aid the study of anatomy alongside Guinterius’s book: Ryff recommended that students walk up and down often in front of the figures in order to grasp the shapes and positions of all the parts of the human body and commit them to memory. The woodcut figures were printed on one side of the paper with no text on the reverse, perhaps so that they could be pinned up on a wall, which would be consistent with Ryff’s suggestion.

This is a woodcut of the anterior view of the skeleton, with the caption, ‘The bones of the human body expressed from the anterior part’, which was copied verbatim from Vesalius’s Anatomical tables. The letters on the image were also copied, but not the names that corresponded to those keys, which rendered this chart of limited use.