Zum Bilde des Menschen in der Anatomie der Renaissance: Andreae Vesalii De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, Basel 1543

Abstract

The position of Andreas Vesalius and his most influential book De humani corporis fabrica in the history of medicine are reevaluated in the context of renaissance-humanism. Vesalius's conception of the reconstruction of the living body is discussed in the light of the macrocosm-microcosm-correspondance considering equally directed considerations of the humanist and reformator Philipp Melanchthon. In both their no longer ontological but epistemological approach when changing from the deductive to the inductive method, microcosm man is becoming an anthropological concept and thus assumes a new quality: a psychophysical unit with a transcendental dimension. Against this background the great tables of the skeletons and musclemen in the De humani corporis fabrica are studied considering the unity of art and anatomy in the visual media. At that point, however, where the limits of Vesalius's anatomical conception in representing structure and function become manifest, the disruption of this unity eventually occurring in the end of the 18th century is already visible. Where anatomy is taken up in the expression of art, in the cosciousness of his finality the tragic horizon of man expands.