Skinned St. Bartholomew before (1541) and after (1556, 1562) Fabrica (1543).

Abstract

When I visited Rome before the coronavirus pandemic, I saw St. Bartholomew depicted in “Last Judgment” in the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. The face on the St. Bartholomew's skin is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo. Michelangelo began to perform his own dissections and demonstrations (Condivi, 1976). The last city of my journey was Milan. In the Duomo of Milan (the Milan Cathedral), an anatomical statue intrigued me: St. Bartholomew statue by Marco d'Agrate. Because it was very similar to the anatomy in the Fabrica (De humani corporis fabrica libri septem) of Vesalius (1543, Plate 27, Figure 1, upper right), I read the text of the exhibition and compared it with Fabrica on my return. I searched for the images of “St. Bartholomew,” representative and anatomical statues or paintings before and after 1543 and selected Michelangelo and Marco d'Agrate to explain the influence of Fabrica. In the Renaissance, anatomical science was a major source of inspiration for artists. By the 15th century, interest had emerged in anatomy as an area of research, and the artists of the period dissected cadavers. Artists performed dissections in order to pursue divine beauty, in the belief that God created humankind in his image, whereas anatomists' goal was to gain scientific knowledge (Sellmer, 2001). St. Bartholomew was portrayed dressed holding a book and a knife up until the 13th to 14th centuries, alluding to the Gospel that he proclaimed and the martyrdom that he suffered. From the Renaissance onward, the iconography of St. Bartholomew with his skin removed from his flesh was finally sanctified after Michelangelo (1541) portrayed him in such a way in the “Last Judgment” in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. It is notable that St. Bartholomew holds his skin in his left hand. However, he himself is not skinned at all, but covered with normal skin. Thereafter, the muscle underneath the skin is visualized as surface anatomy only. However, in the “Last Judgment,” he holds extra skin in his hand (Figure 1, upper left). Two years after the completion of the “Last Judgment,” Andreas Vesalius published his Fabrica (1543, Figure 1, upper right). Subsequently, 13 and 19 years after the publication of Fabrica, Marco d'Agrate made a bronze statue of St. Bartholomew in 1556, in front of the Certosa of Pavia (1556, Figure 1, lower left), and a marble statue in the Milano Duomo (1562, Figure 1, lower right), respectively. These works of Marco d'Agrate do not show any psychological introspection or give evidence of the deep faith expressed by the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. However, they form part of a major 16th-century sphere of interest: the study and presentation of human anatomy (Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, 2018). By comparing the portrayal of St. Bartholomew in Michelangelo's fresco and d'Agrate's statues, we can see the how the publication of Fabrica contributed to art. Artists and anatomists together produced images of the body that combined medical knowledge and an artistic vision. When illustrated anatomical texts became readily available in the 17th century, the general enthusiasm of artists for studying cadavers decreased. This study was supported by a grant from National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020R1I1A2054761). The author declares no potential conflict of interest.