LECTURE 2 "Anatomy, Medicine and Art in the Middle Ages & Early Modern Painting"
1h 10m
Turning to the European Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, this lecture focuses on the increasingly sophisticated understanding of human anatomy (and physiology) during this time that was nevertheless compromised and held back by a continued adherence to the ancient “humoral theory” as the basis of health and disease. It was during this period that anatomical knowledge became, albeit slowly, modern and scientific with consequences for both medicine and art. This evolution in the knowledge of how the human body actually looked, both inside and out, and how it functioned, culminated in the drawings and sculptures of artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and in the anatomical work of the great Belgian anatomist, Andreas Vesalius in the mid-16th century.