Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe

Taylor McCall is the Managing Editor of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies and has held positions at the British Library, University College London and Christie’s. She has published widely in the fields of medieval medicine and art.

Art historian Taylor McCall dismantles the common belief that Renaissance figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius founded the field of human anatomy. Assisted by vivid medieval illustrations, she argues that the earliest anatomical images date from the twelfth century, in monasteries and then early universities. Her scholarly book, the first in this field, aims to show that such imagery is "its own visual language", by exploring anatomy in religious contexts, medical teaching and practice, and the work of professional artists. - Andrew Robinson, NatureThe image of the so-called Dark Ages leadenly fumbling in crude ignorance is as persistent as all too-easy images are. This little book should completely dispel that image. McCall consults a long list of often obscure written sources and, crucially, deploys a stunning array of the anatomical illustrations that filled so many books from the 12th to the 15th century. Those illustrations are the central wonder of the book; they immediately transport the reader to an earlier world full of desperate speculation and the inevitable melding of anatomical studies and the cosmologies of organized religion. - Open Letters ReviewThis book succeeds in providing a compelling overview of the history of medieval anatomical art and dissection, something that has been lacking since Karl Sudhoff’s pioneering explorations of the early twentieth century. - SpeculumThere is a myth that medieval Europeans did not understand human anatomy and did not perform human dissections. Taylor McCall’s new book definitively disproves that and has the images to back it up. - Medievalists.netThe Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe makes the case for the intellectual richness of renderings of the interior of the human body during this period, and the precise and detailed meanings inherent in such images . . . Like the other entries in Reaktion’s Medieval Lives series, McCall’s book combines a crisp and concise writing style with cutting-edge scholarship . . . an intellectually rich and satisfying read. - Fortean TimesMcCall offers an exciting new overview of the deep connections between visual and medical culture during the European Middle Ages. An important revision to the outdated caricature of medieval anatomy as intellectually and artistically backwards, this book tours the rich and varied personalities – monks, university anatomists, physicians, artists and artist-anatomists – who generated both detailed knowledge and eloquent visualizations of the bodily interior. What results is a powerful argument: that medieval people had a close interest anatomical form, striving to innovate how the body was understood and how it was pictured. - Jack Hartnell, Associate Professor of Art History, University of East Anglia, and author of Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle AgesTaylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe is rich and scholarly, full of images both gorgeous and grisly and giving much needed attention to medieval anatomical art. - Mary Wellesley, author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers