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"I did not enjoy anatomy; it was a chore to commit to memory the coloured plates of the anatomy book, to recall in detail, and as clearly as an eidetic image, the Rembrandt painting one had made for oneself by laying bare muscles, tendons, arteries, and nerves of a body that gradually became smaller and smaller as it was dissected away."
- Dannie Abse |
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| Click on the above image to learn more about the Philadelphia Museum of Art's past exhibit, Ars Medica, which sparked my interest in the subject for this guide. |
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Medicine in Art
Before technological advances such as x-rays and digital imaging, physicians often relied on artists to record important visual information about common medical practices. A fascination with illness and the medical field has also driven many fine artists to include images pertaining to medicine in their work, and the results are a combination of dreadful and beautiful. While looking through the archives in the Free Library of Philadelphia's Art Department, I came upon a pamphlet from an art show called Ars Medica, which took place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1976. The pamphlet featured the image on the right of a wound manikin, which apparently was used to help early physicians understand the human body and how it responds to various war injuries. I found it so interesting that I wanted to learn more about the subject, and this guide serves as a location for me to record what I feel are the most interesting examples of medical art. |
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Pathology of Colours by Dannie Abse
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Many artists are fascinated by doctors and medicine, and some doctors have found themselves turning to art as a way to express the complex feelings that can accompany the often revolting aspects of treating the unwell. Dannie Abse is a well-known poet and winner of the prestigious Wales Book of the Year award for 2008 (Poet in a White Coat 2011), but his primary occupation was a doctor. While studying medicine at King's College, Abse often wondered if he had chosen the wrong profession as he found himself more and more dedicated to his other craft. In Abse's acceptance speech upon becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he describes the mental wear that can occur as medical students learn how to distance themselves from the dead bodies they must dissect, and how, as a poet, the feeling of empathy is sometimes too overwhelming to create enough separation between doctor and patient.
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Abse, D. (2011). Poet in a White Coat: In this excerpt from his acceptance speech... World Literature Today, 85(1), 46+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A246342921/GLS?u=philly_free&sid=GLS&xid=e4fe3f77
This is an excerpt from Dannie Abse's acceptance speech when he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Two of his poems are featured in the excerpt.
Gersdorff, Hans von. (1517). Wound Man. [woodcut, color]. Retrieved from http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101434354
The National Library of Medicine is a great starting point for any kind of medical research, as it directs the user to databases such as PubMed, TOXNET, and ClinicalTrials.gov.
| I selected the following artists because I believe they have had a significant impact on culture and because they have painted extensively about health and human suffering. |
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Possibly one of the world's most well-known painters (thanks to The Scream), Edvard Munch played a great role in German expressionism. He had a rather tough upbringing; his mother died of tuberculosis a few years after he was born, and he was raised by his mentally ill father. Strongly influenced by impressionists such as Claude Monet and Edouard Manet, Munch spent many years painting in Paris and Berlin before eventually returning to his home in Norway. |
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I have seen three different titles for this painting: first, in Medicine in Art as "The Operation;" then on The Athenaeum's website as "Self-Portrait on the Operating Table" or "On the Operating Table." The Athenaeum seems confident that this is, indeed, a self-portrait of Edvard Munch. |
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This painting by Edvard Munch is located in the Tate Modern Gallery in London. It is said to be a depiction of the artist's sister, who died of tuberculosis at the age of fifteen (Bordin, G. & D'Ambrosio, L. 2010).
"He described the 1885 painting as ‘a breakthrough in my art’ and made several subsequent versions, of which this is the fourth" (Tate n.d.). |
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Frida Kahlo often painted about the pain she endured throughout her life, and there are many self-portraits of her depicting the surgeries she had on her spine. She is one of the most recognized artists of her time because of her distinct style, and in 2002 a movie was made about her life.
"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best." - Frida Kahlo |
This is the trailer for the 2002 movie about Frida Kahlo. The film stars Salma Hayek and was nominated for six academy awards.
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Frida Kahlo suffered from polio as a child and was in a serious bus accident as a teenager from which she nearly died. This image depicts her pain and sorrow while going through nearly twenty-two surgical operations to heal the fractures in her spine and crushed pelvis. |
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This painting depicts the painful miscarriage that Frida endured after being wrongfully told that she could have her baby by cesarean section. |
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This poster for the 2018 Manayunk Arts Festival features a portrait of Frida Kahlo, demonstrating the ubiquity of her influence. |
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Louis-Alexandre Gosset de Guines, more commonly known as André Gill, is a well-known French caricaturist who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.
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This is an image of the physician Philippe Ricord, who was "the first to show that syphilis and gonorrhea were independent conditions... Here Ricord holds a surgical knife as his attribute"(Helfand 1991).
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See also: La Délivrance (The Delivery) |
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The obstetrician in both this image and Situation Inéressante is Louis Adolphe Thiers, the president of the French Third Republic. "Gill uses the metaphor of childbirth to comment on Thiers's negotiations for the loan that France sorely needed to pay reparations to Germany in the aftermath of the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In A Financially Interesting Situation (no. 62) , he is ready to deliver France's child, and the caption, "The delivery is close," suggests that the funds will soon be forthcoming. In this Gill's second caricature (no. 63), published one week later, the loan has been secured, and Thiers proudly exhibits the newborn for all to see. As a result of the censor's potent control, clouds cover all but the feet of four figures at the bottom of this print. Gill had intended them to represent Napoleon III and leaders of the fallen Bonapartist, Bourbon, and Orléanist factions, each of which had objected to such an early settlement of the indemnity (Helfand 1991)". |
A brief biographical article on André Gill.
This website provides a detailed biography of Munch, as well as information about individual paintings of his and those of his greatest influences.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art's online collection of images for André Gill includes another one of his caricatures not shown on this guide.
A remarkable collection of posters, caricatures, and ephemera relating to how medicine has been visually displayed throughout history.
FridaKahlo.org provides biographical information about the artist as well as individual pages about her paintings. There is also a useful interactive timeline and various quotes from Kahlo herself.
A website that provides historical information about the streets in Paris. The city boasts a street named after André Gill.
The official trailer for the 2002 move Frida, which focuses mainly on Frida Kahlo's romance with Diego Rivera.
The 2018 Manayun Arts Festival is taking place this summer on June 23 and 24.
The Athenaeum's mission is to facilitate the research and discovery of various works of art. The website can be searched by categories such as artist, museum, year, popularity, etc.
Tate has four gallery locations: Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives in Cornwall.
The Free Library of Philadelphia's digital collection contains 46,325 items with additions being regularly added.
C. Dale Young practices medicine full-time but is also the Poetry Editor for The New England Review. His poem, Imprimatur, describes his shame at being too afraid to operate on a woman with a collapsed lung.
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Anatomical illustrations are necessary reference tools for medical students learning the various structures of the human body. However, anatomical illustration has been connected to cultural trends as well.
The following is a description of the medical illustrator profession taken from the Association of Medical Illustrators: "A medical illustrator is a professional artist with advanced education in both the life sciences and visual communication. Collaborating with scientists, physicians, and other specialists, medical illustrators transform complex information into visual images that have the potential to communicate to broad audiences." |
In this TED Talk, medical illustrator Vanessa Ruiz enthusiastically describes the evolution of her profession.
View the student gallery from Johns Hopkins Unversity's medical illustration graduate program's graduating classes of 2011-2018.
Here you can learn more about what medical illustrators do, how the profession has evolved over time, and what kind of experience and education is necessary for the job.
Medical Illustrator Vanessa Ruiz describes the history of medical illustration, how it evolved over time, and how it is used in modern art. Her exploration is captivating and showcases some extremely talented artists.
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"Institutionalized medical service was conspicuously rare in most pre-modern civilizations. The temple of healing of ancient Egypt and Greek Aesculapion more closely resemble the treatment at modern shrines such as Lourdes than that in hospitals of our day. Likewise, Roman sanatoria and military hospitals, and most medieval guest-houses (xenodochia), monastic infirmaria and 'hospices' of the Hospitallers provided little that resembles modern clinical treatment. "This was especially true of the earlier medieval centuries. The so-called 'hospitals' of the West provided only a semi-medical type of practical nursing adjusted to the care rather than to the cure of sick, crippled, old, and indigent inmates. 'God's poor,' as they were called, obtained hospitality, rather than healing, in guest houses or 'hospices' staffed by monks, nuns, and, occasionally, secular clerics. Leprosaria were for the confinement of incurables. Infirmaria were chiefly for members of the restricted orders of clerics." - Loren MacKinney (1965), Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts |
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This image from a medieval manuscript originated in Germany. |
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This manuscript illustration is from the 15th century and is currently located in the University of Glasgow Library in Scotland. |
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Incisions were sometimes made in the scalp to inspect fractures of the skull. |
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This manuscript originated in Germany.
"Drawings of vein men, and man with notes of body parts, at the beginning of a treatise upon blood-letting in German"(Catalogue of Illuminted Manuscripts). |
The MacKinney Collection is part of the University of North Carolina's library.
Very insightful commentary on the (thankfully) outdated methods of caring for the ill during medieval times, as well as a selection of images from medieval manuscripts.
A concise reaction to an art exhibit that took place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was called "The Ingenious Machine of Nature, Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy" and displayed historical medical illustrations.
Very rare and old medieval manuscripts can be found in this database, though a lot of the images lack significant descriptions due to their age and scarcity.
This is a great resource for illuminated manuscripts of any subject, and images can be zoomed in for impressive detail.
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This is just a small selection of art that uses medicine as its central theme. |
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An oil painting by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec which appears to depict a dental procedure. |
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This painting by Thomas Eakins was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania Medical Class of 1889 and has been discussed extensively due to its complexity. Every portrait in the painting is potentially the artist's representation of a real member of the class of 1889, as shown on the Penn University Archives and Records Center. Eakins apparently included himself in the painting as well, as the man shadowed in the bottom-right corner who appears to be listening to a man whispering from his right. |
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Journée nationale des tuberculeux (National Day for the Benefit of Tubercular Soldiers), by French artist Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, is a poster created for an annual fundraising event for the aid of soldiers with tuberculosis. A small note at the bottom informs viewers that the poster is not for sale, and cautions them to treat it with care. |
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Medardo Rosso was a famous impressionist sculptor who many compare to Auguste Rodin. His wax sculpture of a man slumped in a chair was inspired by his time spent in Laribosière Hospital, where "the sight impressed itself upon his retina and upon his tender heart"(Barr 1963). |
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Asclepius, also known as Asklepios, was the Greek god of medicine. This statue of him is located at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
"Asklepios was the son of Apollon and the Trikkaian (Triccaean) princess Koronis (Coronis). His mother died in labour and when she was laid out on the pyre, Apollon cut the unborn child from her womb. From this Asklepios received his name which means 'to cut open.' Asklepios was raised by the centaur Kheiron (Chiron) who instructed him in the art of medicine. He grew so skilled in the craft that he was able to restore the dead to life. This was a crime against the natural order and so Zeus destroyed him with a thunderbolt"(Theoi Project 2017). |
This book includes personal information about Medardo Russo, as well as images of his sculptures and the inspiration behind each work.
An exhaustive collection of paintings and other works of art, many by well-known artists, organized by subjects such as disease, mental illness, medicine, and healing.
This brief blog post describes the author's awe at viewing The Agnew Clinic at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
This museum is located in Paris and was opened in 1998. It lists one of its purposes as "to preserve, study, disseminate and showcase public or private museum collections, archives and documentary collections relating to the art and history of the Jews."
The Courtauld Institute of Art holds a collection of images, stories, and quizzes about famous works, and the site is very easy to navigate.
Background, style, and controversy are among the topics found on the Wikipedia page for Thomas Eakins' painting, The Agnew Clinic. The article also discusses Mary V. Clymer, who is "credited by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) as the first trained operating room nurse in Philadelphia."
Theoi Project provides an exhaustive list of Greek and Olympian gods, as well as mythological creatures and legendary heroes.
ArtStor is probably the most well-known online database for all images pertaining to art.
The story of how artist Thomas Eakins was commissioned to paint a portrait of D. Hayes Agnew, and how the artist made various decisions about color, lighting, and subject matter.
A description of the 1976-1977 exhibit that took place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kneeland McNulty is credited as the show's curator.
