I have said it before – there was a greater appreciation for the art of the human body in the science of the past. Frederik Ruysch is the perfect example of an artist/scientist – as an anatomist, he carefully preserved pieces of flesh from many different species, including humans, but he placed his subjects delicately into their jars, and often decorated them. A baby’s head, embalmed in permanent sleep, rests with an embroidered cap on it. A woman’s forearm and hand gestures from out of its lacy sleeve. Ruysch also created fantastical scenes out of skeletons and fauna and flora, sometimes on the lids of his jars.Below you’ll find some of his actual preserved pieces, as well as illustrations of his work.
Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was a Dutch botanist and anatomist, remembered mainly for his groundbreaking methods of anatomical preservation and the creation of his carefully arranged scenes incorporating human body parts. These remarkable ‘still life’ displays blurred the boundary between the demonstrative element of scientific preservation and the symbolic and allegorical of vanitas art. As well as his larger more elaborate anatomical displays (as seen above) he would also keep his specimens of limbs, fetuses and the carcasses of small animals carefully embalmed in individual glass jars. Offsetting the macabre contents he would create ‘flowering’ lids, decorating them with beads, fishes, shells, artificial flowers and lacy garments – the little scenes often echoing the life the jar’s contents had once known. The images below are extracted from Ruysch’s Thesaurus animalium primus (1710).
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