Visualizing the Body Within in Art and Medicine

The problem of imaging the insides of the human body, the body within, has been an important concern in both the fine arts and the natural sciences. Throughout history our changing perception of the body within has had significant social, cultural and historical impact as well as profound implications on the relationship between the “body”, ”self” and the “world” on a cultural and individual basis ( Van de Vall 5). This paper examines the interrelated nature of the Visual arts and Medicine in terms of representing and understanding the body within.

Since the Renaissance, artists had been concerned with learning about the body by dissecting it and recording their observations through drawing. As these descriptive drawings became more exact and complete, the artist’s skill became a specialty and the drawings an instrument for the education and practice of physicians and surgeons (Kleiner 805). An anatomical drawing was not simply a guide for a painter or sculptor constructing an image of the human body, but a tool for specialists in the medical field. In this respect it made its contribution as a “technological device, an art or craft applied to a science, which have proved indispensable well into the computer age” (Kleiner 805).

Historians have long recognized the part Leonardo Da Vinci played in inaugurating the descriptive science of anatomy. Throughout his life Leonardo Da Vinci had engaged in anatomical research but his breakthrough and innovations in anatomy came after 1510, when he started employing the exploded view technique and made drawings of one part of the body from different points of view, often combined with the technique of transparency (Van de Vall 18).

In painting Da Vinci emphasized that each represented surface should be an “emotionally charged surface, one that expresses both the body’s internal structure and its emotional core” (Van de Vall 19). In his manuscripts he claims that only if a painter has extensive knowledge of the anatomical and physiological structures and phenomena of the human body he is capable of representing the human body’s exterior faithfully- “the soul can only be represented in its workings on the body’s exterior” (Van de Vall 19).Thus the problem arose in depicting the body within. How can the body’s interior be represented as an emotionally charged surface.

Professor Robert Zwijnenberg claims that in the drawing of a “fetus”, although not accurate, Da Vinci successfully expresses the relationship between surface and emotion in depicting the insides of the body ( Van de Vall 19). The fetus is in a stooped position, and the hands positioned before the eyes strengthens the impression of containment and seclusion (Van de Vall 20). So although it is a cut away drawing the emotion allows us to understand the uterus as an enclosed space.

A major part of Leonardo’s anatomical research was devoted to the female reproductive organs, not unusual in his time. His anatomical research of the female organs is related to his theological and natural philosophical views on the mystery of human origins and the origins of natural life in general (Van de Vall 27). Regin Stefaniak provides an interpretation of the painting “Virgin on the Rocks” by Da Vinci in a detailed essay claiming the viewer is looking into the Virgin Mary’s uterus, where the origin of life begins and in which Christ and St. John are united(Van de Vall 30).

In his manuscript Leonardo describes his encounter with a cave. The text is special because it reveals some of Leonardo’s emotions-“…..I moved to and fro in order to see if I could see something inside the cave, but great darkness that prevailed over there was an obstacle. After standing there for a while suddenly two things emerged in me, fear and desire- fear for the dark and threatening cave, desire to see whether some wonderful thing was there” ( Van de Vall 19). Prof. Zwijnenberg feels that the text aptly describes the fear and desire of the anatomist to enter the human body (Van de Vall 19). Anatomy involves a paradoxical situation: the anatomist wants to show the truth of the body, but in order to do so he must destroy the object of his or her deep attention (Van de Vall 20).

In the Enlightenment period, scientific questioning of all assertions was encouraged and stimulated the habit and application of the scientific method (Kleiner 805). Barbara Stafford writes that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment, anatomy became the basic science for surgeons ( Body Criticism 49). Wiliam Chambers noted that surgery consisted “…in operations performed by hand for the cure of wounds and other Disorders” (Stafford, Body Criticism 49). Significantly it was not medicine but surgery that was progressive during the eighteenth century. Surgeons, not physicians, taught anatomy in special schools through dissections carried out by adjunct demonstrators. Surgeons were akin to painters, sculptors and architects- “Their dedication to the education of the eye in order to capture fleeting signs and symptoms was similarly coupled to the training of an acute sense of touch” (Stafford, Body Criticism 49).

A visual analogy likening the excellent medical Practitioner to the hand of God also began to occur in artwork, such as in Rembrandt’s “ Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp “or “ Jacques Gamelin’s Anatomy Theater “(Stafford, Body Criticism 49).

Stafford notes that like surgery, the manual fine arts comprised of useful human skills as both were devoted to a discriminating observation of signs and symptoms, to contextualized pattern recognition, to an informed and refined sensory judgment of appearances and looks (Body Criticism 49). The experimental artist and clinical physician shared an eye for gauging the flux of passing effects, judged particular embodiments in non -numerical and non-linguistic manner, and both dealt in an aesthetic and ethical enterprise. The tactile analogy between surgery and the visual arts most pertinent in the 18th century was the moral activity of dissecting and cutting (Stafford, Body Criticism 50).

The tension between “practical “visual and the theoretical “ textual “ was demonstrated by the rupture between the two disciplines, surgery and the theorist physician. The division widened with the rise of specialization (Stafford, Body Criticism 50).On a Similar note, in my interview with surgeon Dr. Harris Dabideen, he described his decision to be a surgeon was due to the fact that he was more attracted to the hands on and practical nature of surgery, and found the theoretical nature in the other medical fields tedious (“Dr. Harris Dabideen”).

Around the time of the Enlightenment people also imagined disease and corruption of the inner body in the form of animals living and breeding inside them. This phenomenon was known as the “Bosom Serpent” (Van de Vall 31). Early in the 18th century, 78 year old Grietje Willems, having been violently sick for some time, vomited up a small four legged creature, which resembled a little dog (Van de Vall 32). It had a head, a mouth, a tongue, legs, a tail, something like an umbilical cord and it was enveloped in a small pocket, resembling a womb (Van de Vall 32). Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, famous for his Anatomical cabinets was presented with the dog like creature which was preserved in brandy and olive oil to be examined and exhibited (Van de Vall 32). In another case, Ruysch encountered a fourteen year old girl, who having been ill for many years vomited a king of slug with two eyes and an umbilical cord (Van de Vall 32).

Utilizing a secret technique of injecting a wax like fluid into blood and other vessels, Ruysch preserved rarities, body parts, the bodies of unborn fetuses and tiny infants, in such a way that they looked alive (Van de Vall 33). Exhibited and freely accessible to the public, Ruysch’s cabinets were meant to remind the beholder of the fragility of life (Van de Vall 37). His written accounts described the collections, how he acquired the particular specimens and included medical explanations.

“Bosom Serpent” phenomena may have been explained medically as hushed up abortions or the economic and political fears of the Dutch republic, reflected metaphorically through the imaginations of the people. There was an early modern Dutch obsession with little animals gnawing at dikes and houses and thus at the prosperity of the Dutch republic (Van de Vall 49).

However, Barbara Stafford calls these stories the early modern “activity of visibilizing , or incarnating, the invisible” which “became endowed with a special urgency in early modern art and experimentalisation”(Van de Vall 37 ).Stafford has focused narrowly on the Enlightenment invention of metaphors in art and medicine, which represent the unknown depths of the body. In her views stories about animals attacking the body were produced in the mind, she argues, they were “irreverently compounded from new or complex ideas not found in empirical reality but nonetheless corresponding to the contradictory feel of that reality” ( Van de Vall 37).

Robert Jutte has understood these stories in the context of popular belief and folklore, pointing to the early modern preoccupation with “imagination” as a possible explanation for the alleged monstrous growth of animals inside humans ( Van de Vall 34) In the Middle ages, the phenomenon known as the “Bosom Serpent” was mentioned frequently in legends, medical works and the saints’ lives, even until the twentieth century, accounts continued to surface of people suffering from live animals in the stomach ( Van de Vall 34). Some aspects of the “Bosom Serpent” stories seemed to have found its place in the present day genres of horror and science fiction films, such as the popular “ Alien” franchise.

Scholars of Art History and Cultural studies have linked the history of skin to a profound shift in the conception of the human body around the time of the French Revolution (Van de Vall 51). The conception of skin from open porous layer to a closed boundary limit for the body changed the body image towards an individuated and sealed off body in the late Enlightenment (Van de Vall 37 ). The largest human organ- the skin occupies a remarkable position as a mediator between the inner body and the outside world. A renewed interest in microscopy emerged in German universities from the 1830’s as microscopist examined skin as an object to learn about physiology and anatomy (Van de Vall 55).

Research and depiction went hand in hand. Jan Evangelistal Purkinje argued for the need of drawing when observing with the microscope as the aim was to visualize and externalize the acquired subjective “inner” experiences and images of the microscopists on the “outside” paper as part of the microscopical work (Van de Vall 65).It was not possible to depict all the details in the field of view, therefore it was necessary to be selective and reduce the drawing to its essential elements. A standardized depiction of the microscopic structure of the skin, including a hair, sebaceous glands and sweat glands, was shown in anatomical works and many books on diseases from the middle of the nineteenth century (Van de Vall 65).

The emergence of a microscopical image of skin allowed for a new idea of bodily interiority. Cleanliness regimes from the nineteenth century onwards heavily leaned on the new conception of the skin (Van de Vall 65). Management of the skin was taken up as a way to control the body.

Using Michelangelo’s Dona Tondo detail (1504) James Elkins demonstrates the late Renaissance’s lack of interest in “details of skin, such as folds, dimples, softness and hardness, hairs and pores, transclucent veins…”(Pictures of the Body 62). Elkins claims that this occurrence may have corresponded to Christian thoughts of ideal bodies and skins that would be donned in heaven (Pictures of the Body 62). Grunewald’s Crucifixion painting represents the polar opposite in 16th century art. He concentrates on skin. Elkins states that pictures that look too closely at skin tend to be about touch, irritability and hypersensitivity (Picture of the Body 69). He also implicates that in Grunewald’s paintings and drawings, skin is a figure of divine agony, and also the agony of the body ill at ease with itself (Pictures of the Body 69).

Similar to Michelangelo’s and Grunewald’s use of skin as a metaphor in their artworks, Artists have always utilised metaphors to depict the processes of the body within. Hans Blumenthal described “metaphorology” as a powerful means for understanding the rationally ungraspable or the indescribable ( Stafford, Body Criticism 49). Barbara Stafford says that “ metaphorology opens up a wider and truly cross-disciplinary horizon onto the past and the future….Body metaphors derived from both aesthetic and medical practices, developed during the Enlightenment onwards, made visible the unseeable aspects of the world.” (Body Criticism 50) Human Lungs and its components, for example, are both visually and functionally similar to trees.

Elkins describes the observations of the painting“The Birth Of Venus” by a medical doctor Dr. Jan Dequeker. From his observations, the doctor diagnosed Simmonetta Vespucci, the model pictured in Botticelli’ s “Birth of Venus”, as a sufferer from tuberculosis- related rheumatoid arthritis- sign and symptoms include deviated fingers, swollen ankles, swollen left index finger (Elkins Pictures of the Body 153). Interesting fact is that Simonetta died shortly after the paintings were made, possibly in considerable pain (Elkins, Pictures of the Body 153). Botticelli’s emphasis on air and the flora in the painting may have been a metaphor for the lungs, but the mystery is whether it was something he may have implemented consciously or subconsciously.

Similarly, artist John Constable’s wife was dying of a Tuberculosis related disease as well when he did a series of drawings of trees, in which a critic described him as trying to capture breeziness, as though he was trying to fill her lungs with air.

Leonardo Da Vinci exemplifies metaphorology in his statement- “by the ancients man has been called the world in miniature; and certainly this name is well bestowed, because, in as much as man is composed of earth, water, air and fire, his body resembles that of the earth; and as man has in him bones , the supports and framework of his flesh, the world has its rocks, the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean tide which likewise rises and falls every six hours, as if the world breathes; as in pool of blood veins have their origin, which ramify all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water”( Stafford, Visual Analogy 167). James Elkins claims that “Every picture is a picture of the body. Every work of visual art is a representation of the Body” (Pictures of the Body 1). Dr. Harris Dabideen, having an early interest in Geography, states “Anatomy is the geography of the body” (“Dr. Harris Dabideen”).

The use of metaphor changed along with the different schools of thought and is reflected within the different art movements. In Neoclassical painting, reality was geometrical, and rationality prevailed (Stafford, Body Criticism 8). In Romanticism, the emphasis was placed on death, suffering, emotion and the path to freedom was through imagination rather than reason, feeling rather than through thinking (Kleiner 806).

Thomas Eakins, a realist painter, believed that knowledge – and where relevant, scientific knowledge – was a prerequisite for his art. He did anatomical studies. As a realist his ambition was to paint things as he saw them rather than as the public might wish them to be portrayed, combining an admiration for “accurate depiction with a hunger for truth” ( Kleiner 810).

Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, one of the most important anatomists of his time, famous for his extremely exact representations wrote: “It is well known that it is very difficult to find a drawer who on the one hand is capable of understanding everything that a dissector actually needs to know, and on the other hand is not too stubborn to follow a lead. Most of them apply to insignificant details, to an unnatural fold due to the shrinking of the specimen in the alcohol…… Some artists simply cannot be taught to see only what is actually supposed to be represented and to leave out the details that do not belong to the subject or are even merely accidental (Van de Vall 71).

Dr. Frank Netter was an exception, and became the most prominent and influential medical illustrator in recent times .His effective drawing were due to his ability to extract and place emphasis on the important details in his anatomical illustrations (“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”).

James Elkins claims that medical images have been of interest not only because they have directly influenced artistic practices from the fifteenth century onward but also because medical illustration inevitably evokes affective questions of gender, pleasure, pain and commonly uses pictorial conventions very close to those of contemporaneous fine art (The Domain of Images 8).

Similar to the use of metaphors, medical illustrators utilized the conventions provided by the different art movements. For example, Andreas Vesalius’s figures have affinities with Italian landscape and figural compositions, Charles Estienne’s figures are allied with the school of Fontainebleau, Govard Bidloo’s dissections use Dutch still life conventions and Bernard Albinus’s figures have close parallels to Neo classical art theory ( Elkins, “The Domain of Images” 8).

The major formal difference between the two is that medical illustrators were routinely granted license to portray aspects of death sexuality and the inside of the body that were proscribed for fine artists (Elkins, “The Domain of Images” 8).

Since the invention of X-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, the interior body has become accessible and visible without dissection (Van de Vall 107). The body can be entirely screened and elucidated by shining light through it. Especially since the 1960’s, the development of all kinds of imaging technologies, such as endoscopy, ultrasound, MRI, PET and CT scans, has expanded enormously(Van de Vall 107). It is characteristic for these technologies that they can fairly easily enter the body by letting its surface intact and undamaged and it is a crucial difference that we can now make visible the interior of the body while it is still alive (Van de Vall 107). Moreover we can view the interior of our own living body. These technologies have changed the way in which we perceive and think about the body.

Dr. Harris Dabideen born and raised in colonial Trinidad, studied medicine in Ireland, and has been a General Surgeon since 1973 in Flint Michigan (“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”). He describes himself as having grown with the technology, and made sure over the years to keep up with the current trends of surgery along with the new technological devices (“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”).. He also described the major types of modern surgery such as Laparascopic and the Da Vinci Surgical Robot procedures, both of which have improved the surgeon’s visualization of the bodily interiors tremendously. Laparoscopic surgery uses the laparoscope camera, which projects the interior of the body onto monitors from which the surgeons look at to operate (“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”). Dr. Dabideen describes the Da Vinci Robot as having the best visuals, giving an almost three dimension- like simulation of the inside of body, improving the surgeon’s accuracy and reducing human error tremendously(“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”). The new visualization technologies for viewing the interior of body has benefited modern surgical practices and has made it now possible, as described by Dr. Dabideen, that the surgeon does not even have to be in the same room as the patient in order to perform surgery (“ Dr. Harris Dabideen”) .

Computer Graphics depends on the older history of art. The rendering routines that have been developed in the last two decades model light effects that are found in Renaissance and Baroque Paintings- inherited pictorial versions of naturalism (Elkins, The Domain of Images 8). The history of three dimensional rendering rehearses the early history of linear perspective; the current interest in translucent “mylar” layering revives diaphanous rococo effects of fresco and oil paint; the routines for lighting gradients recall seventeenth and eighteenth century interest in specular and diffuse reflections (Elkins, The Domain of Images 8). Many kinds of computer graphics inadvertently draw near to fine art traditions from the Renaissance onward and those parallels are a major reason why computer graphics are presented and studied as independent works of art (Elkins, The Domain of Images 9).

In the twentieth century artists have looked to science for imagery and art historians have worked to explain pictures by locating the relevant scientific sources. The artistic tendency to use science to inform art is an extension of a romantic and late romantic attitude and it normally operates by reinventing the ‘dry’ scientific material in order to bring out its expressive meanings (Elkins, The Domain of Images 8). In the twentieth century those distinctions have collapsed and artist from Joseph Beuys , Arnulf Rainer, Hermann Nitsch and Karen Finlay make free use of medical images and scenes of the body’s interior(Elkins, The Domain of Images 8) .

There is no doubt that visualization of the body within has proved indispensable throughout history and has affected all aspects of life. Thus it is not a surprise that many art historians make the claim for the creation of a “visual science” of sorts. Barbara Stafford claims that there has been a radical shift from a text based to a visually centered culture and that modern societies need to develop innovative, nonlinguistic paradigms and train a broad public in visual aptitude (Body Criticism 467).Stafford also believes artists and art educators have unique skills and insight to contribute to society on this issue stating “This major and inescapable universalization of vision suggests the visual aptitude and sophisticated visual learning should no longer be considered a mere aesthetic luxury”(Body Criticism 471). The interrelationship between the realm of medicine and art is proof of this, and continues to be beneficial to society. Hopefully in the near future a more fuller and pronounced integration of the two realms can lead to a greater understanding of the body within.