Vesalius and His Worlds. Medical Illustration During the Renaissance

Dec. 12/13, 2014, The Huntington Library and Gardens: Ahmanson Room, Brody Botanical Center

In celebration of famous anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius’s 500th anniversary, the conference brings together rare book collectors, curators, art and cultural historians, and physicians to explore the changing concepts of the human body and visualizations of knowledge in illustrated medical treatises from the early Renaissance to the 17th century.

Friday, Dec. 12

9:00 am Registration and Coffee

9:30 am
WELCOME
Steve Hindle (W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, Huntington Library)

INTRODUCTION
Jeanette Kohl (University of California, Riverside)
The Body on Paper. Art History and Medical Illustrations

SESSION 1: Examining Vesalius’s De Fabrica
Moderator: (David Brafman, Getty Research Institute)

Dan Lewis (Dibner Senior Curator of Science and Technology, Huntington Library)
Drawing Death: Three Sketches for the Title-Page of the 1543 de Fabrica

Claus Zittel (Freie Universität Berlin)
Orders of Knowledge and Imaging in Vesalius's Fabrica

Eugene S. Flamm, MD (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York)
Pre- and Post-Vesalian Brains

12:30 pm LUNCH

1:30 pm
SESSION 2: Vesalius’s Legacy and the History of Collecting
Moderator: Dan Lewis

Jeremy Norman (Rare book collector and dealer)
Mascagni's and Antommarchi's Elephant Folio Anatomies: Life-Size Images in the Vesalian Tradition of Anatomical Illustration

Mario Molina, MD (CEO, Molina Healthcare Inc., and rare book collector)
Osler, Cushing, and Vesalius

3:15 pm COFFEE BREAK

3:30 pm
SESSION 3: Being Human: Visualizing Gender, Reproduction, Disease
Moderator: Alexander Wragge-Morley (University College, London)

Lyle Massey (University of California, Irvine)
Nosce te uterum: Tracing the “Human” in Early Modern Anatomy

Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Visualizing Disease in the Early Modern Period

5:30 pm Finish

Saturday, December 13

9:00 am Registration & Coffee

9:30 am
SESSION 4: Surface and Depth: The Body Observed and Imagined
Moderator: Lyle Massey

Jonathan Sawday (Washington University, Saint Louis)
So Why Did We Turn to the Body?

Mechthild Fend (University College London)
Anatomical Still Lifes. The Reconfiguration of the Body in Bidloo’s and Lairesse’s Anatomia Humani Corporis (1685)

11:45 am
TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION “BEAUTIFUL SCIENCE”
with curator Dan Lewis

12:30 pm LUNCH

1:30 pm
SESSION 5: Senses, Symbols, and Materials: Communicating Medical Knowledge
Moderator: Mechthild Fend

Marguerite V. Hodge (University of California, San Diego)
The Body in European and Japanese Medical Treatises of the Early Modern Period

Alexander Wragge-Morley (University College London)
British Anatomical Publications and Aesthetic Production, 1694-1733

3:10 pm COFFEE BREAK

3:30 pm
Frank Fehrenbach (Universität Hamburg)
Animated Skeletons. Anatomy and the Aporia of Life

4:45 pm CLOSING DISCUSSION

Conference Venue:

The Huntington Library and Gardens
Ahmanson Room, Brody Botanical Center
1151 Oxford Rd,
San Marino, CA 91108

Please RSVP
Contact:
Jeanette Kohl
jkohlgetty.edu, phone 1-310-440-6946