VESALE, André
De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri septem…
Bâle, Ioannes Oporinus, 1543
In-folio (399 x 261 mm) de 6 ff.n.ch. y compris le titre gravé, 663 pp. (mal ch. 659) et 18 ff.n.ch. (les feuillets numérotés 313 et 353-354 sont doubles). Vélin moderne dans le style de l’époque.
350 000 
Garrison-Morton, 375; Cushing, 79-88; Heralds of Science, 122; Printing and the Mind of Man, 71; Horblit, 98; Grolier, Medicine, 18A; Norman, 2137.

En stock

Édition originale.

 

L’apparition de ce livre est dans l’histoire de la médecine l’événement le plus important qui se soit produit depuis les travaux de Galien. Père de l’anatomie moderne, Vésale ouvrit la voie à Harvey et lui permit de poser les fondements de la physiologie. En anatomie et en médecine clinique, il est à l’origine d’un renouvellement de l’observation.

Ce volume est non seulement un chef-d’œuvre typographique mais aussi un magnifique livre illustré.

Les nombreuses gravures sur bois qui l’illustrent ont longtemps été attribuées à Jan Stephan van Calcar, élève du Titien.

“With De humani corporis fabrica, published when he was only twenty-nine years old, Vesalius revolutionized not only the science of anatomy but how it was taught. Throughout this encyclopaedic work on the structure and workings of the human body, Vesalius provided a fuller and more detailed description of human anatomy than any of his predecessors, correcting errors in the traditional anatomical teachings of Galen… The Fabrica also broke new ground in its unprecedented blending of scientific exposition, art and typography. Although earlier anatomical books, such as those by Berengario da Carpi had contained some notable anatomical illustrations, they had never appeared in such number or been executed in such minute precision as in the Fabrica, and they had usually been introduced rather haphazardly with little or no relationship to the text… The book remains the masterpiece of Johannes Oporinus of Basel, one of the most widely learned and iconoclastic of the so-called ‘scholar-printers’, whose success with this book apparently caused Vesalius to entrust to Oporinus all of his alter publications… Although the illustrations have traditionally been attributed to an associate of Titian, Jan Stephan von Calcar who drew and possibly engraved the three woodcuts of skeletons in Vesalius first series of anatomical charts, Tabulae antomicae sex (1538), there is no reliable basis for this attribution. Modern scholarship attributes the Fabrica woodcuts only to an unknown artist or artists in the school of Titian. Vesalius commissioned the illustrations and supervised their production” (Norman).

 

Soigneusement lavé, titre restauré, portrait restauré et renmargé, cahiers 2C-2D, 2L-2M avec déchirures touchant au texte restaurées et avec quelques lettres redessinées à la plume, dernier feuillet restauré avec trou comblé.

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