Abstract

In a fourteenth-century copy of Henri de Mondeville's Chirurgia (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 0.2.44), a flayed human body carries its skin on a staff, displaying the underlying fleshy tissues. The unpainted drawing illustrates Mondeville's discussion of flesh and fat. Taking this image as its main focus, this article is concerned with the fleshiness of the medieval image. It considers medieval understanding of flesh to examine the relationship between flesh and the figure in the Chirurgia. I explore closely the relationship between parchment, a support made of skin, and the pen-drawing on its surface. Moreover, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of flesh, which postulates an association between visuality and flesh. Overall, the article argues that the drawing formulates a discourse on flesh. It is not merely a depiction of flesh but rather, I contend, becomes fleshy in the interaction with the viewer.

Highlights

  • The fourth, a flayed man carrying his skin over his shoulders on a stick, and the skin of his head with hair, the skin of his hands, and his feet, and the lacerated flesh that is on the body, and the white which is the breasts and the emunctories [excretory organs], and by the opening of the venter [belly] is the fat and the lard.[1]

  • My analysis begins by tracing how flesh was apprehended at the time, and by Mondeville, to reflect on the relationship between flesh and the Cambridge flayed figure as an image situated at the emergence of anatomy as a discipline

  • The viewer of the Cambridge copy of the Chirurgia, who would want to understand the internal functioning of the human body, would see their own flesh according to the flayed figure

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Summary

Introduction

The fourth, a flayed man carrying his skin over his shoulders on a stick, and the skin of his head with hair, the skin of his hands, and his feet, and the lacerated flesh that is on the body, and the white which is the breasts and the emunctories [excretory organs], and by the opening of the venter [belly] is the fat and the lard.[1]. The reality of the drawing is even more important in Trinity O.2.44 than is the case with the BnF français 2030 figure, where paint makes the image stand out from page and text, and disassociates the representation of the flesh from its material support.

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