BERENGARIO DA CARPI, Jacopo (c. 1460-1530)

Isagog[a]e Breves , perlucide ac uberrime, in anatomia[m] humani corporis, a, com[m]uni medicoru[m] academia usitat[a], a, Carpo in almo gymnasio ordinaria[m] chirurgie publice docente, ad suo[rum] scholasticoru[m] p[re]ces in lucem date ... Nicolaus Bargilius Bonon. dissecuit varios hominem Mundinus in artus subiciens cupidis qu[ae]q[ue] videnda oculis. Mundinum at melior divisit Carpus: & auxit: ne foret, alcerutru[m] qui sibi forte paret. Idem. In Carpo seri discent tua scripta ne potes h[a]ec Mundine charta loquentur anus. [Colophon] Anno Virginei partus. M.D.XXII. Sub die. xxx. Dece[m]...

      Bologna: Benedetto Faelli, 1522. 4to: A--I8, ff. 72. Roman letter, title within a criblé woodcut border, initial spaces with guide letters, printer's device on f72r. 19 large and 2 smaller anatomical woodcuts. Leaf size and condition: 212 x 145mm. Titlepage soiled and bound tight obscuring some of the border at the inner margin; heavy soiling to lower outer margins and extensive repairs to blank margins of sigs A--E and I (all the leaves that contain illustrations), tears in B1 extending into the printed captions of two illustrations and in I3 and I4 into the captions and woodcuts of three illustrations, all without loss, a few letters lost on f. 35r; a few small worm holes, some filled, one affecting the printer's device on the last leaf. Binding: Re-sewn and re-cased in seventeenth-century carta rustica; no free endleaves. Provenance and annotation: 'Franciscus Justinie[?]', signature, partially erased, on titlepage. Pen trials on f. 53v and f. 54r, some colour added to the illustration on f. 25. Walter Pagel (1896--1983); B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: Putti pp. 148--50; EDIT16 CNCE 5421; Wellcome 782; Garrison--Morton 368; Norman 188; Waller 907. First edition. A second edition, slightly enlarged, was issued by Faelli in 1523, followed by reprints, Strasbourg, 1530 and Venice 1535. § This famous work introduced several innovations in anatomy and anatomical illustration and is among the most important precursors of Vesalius. 'Berengario was the author of the first [anatomical] illustrations made from nature. His innate feeling for the graphic arts seems to have aided him considerably in his first attempts' (Choulant p. 138). Several of Berengario's illustrations, such as those of the veins on f. 67r, show the influence of Leonardo (Herlinger p. 83). This set of anatomical illustrations is by far the most extensive that had appeared up to this time. The male skeleton and muscle figures are displayed against landscape backgrounds in the way that would be followed by Estienne and Vesalius. The female figures are equally striking and, in contrast to the male figures, are revealed in bedrooms, or holding sheets (or shrouds?) behind themselves. Both the situation and the poses of the figures giving them an erotic charge; they are modelled on works of art and inspired Estienne's female figures, but not those of Vesalius. As Talvacchia remarks 'artistic conventions for the display of the eroticized female body shared those developed for the demonstration of female sexual organs' (Talvacchia pp. 169--70). The last five woodcuts seem to have been intended for artists. The Isagogae breves is a condensed version of Berengario's Commentaria on Mondino's anatomy (1521) and uses many of the same woodcuts, but with significant revisions and additions. The Commentaria was printed at Bologna by Girolamo de Benedetto whom Choulant suggests may have cut the blocks. Three of the woodcuts which Choulant says were intended for artists are omitted, but the illustration of two uteri on f. 25r is new, as is the muscleman on f.69r. The second edition, printed in the following year, added three more anatomical woodcuts and revisions to other woodcuts. Garrison--Morton notes that this work includes a description of the valves of the heart and Pagel discusses Berengario's views on the disputed septum of the heart in the Commentaria (William Harvey's Biological Ideas, p. 159). Though he does not mention the Isagogae specifically he would no doubt have been interested in what Berengario says here about the veins and the heart. Berengario was born in Carpi, near Modena, the son of a surgeon. He took is MD at Bologna and taught surgery first at Pavia, then at Bologna. After 1527 he was in Ferrara and Rome where he was the first to use mercury in the treatment of syphilis and thereby earned a large fortune. He was regarded by Benvenuto Cellini as 'a great connoisseur in the arts of design' (quoted by Choulant, p. 136). Literature: Ludwig Choulant, trs and annotated by Mortimer Frank, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1945) pp. 136--142; Vittorio Putti, Berengario da Carpi; saggio biografico e bibliografico, seguito dalla traduzione del "De fractura calvae sive cranei" (1937); Robert Herrlinger, History of medical illustration (1970), pp. 80--83; Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions. On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (1999).