Leonardo Da Vinci’s Anatomical Studies
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Perhaps the one thing that strikes the most when analyzing Leonardo’s anatomical drawings is the harmony existing between artistic talent and technical precision. Each of his drawings represents in itself an artistic achievement worth studying and understanding for the mechanical implications and technicalities. Leonardo’s drawings are considered by some as the most artistic anatomical drawings of the Renaissance.
William Hunter, a renowned surgeon and a competent judge at the time of George III said of Leonardo: “When I consider what pains he has taken upon every part of the body, the superiority of his universal genius, his particular excellence in mechanics and hydraulics, and the attention with which such a man would examine and see objects which he has to draw, I am fully persuaded that Leonardo was the best Anatomist, at his time, in the world…Leonardo was certainly the first man, we know of, who introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings.” (Notebooks, v.2, p. 106)
Leonardo wanted to implement his knowledge of the macrocosmos and the physics that rule the world into his microcosmos of the human body. Although Leonardo was inspired and influenced by many contemporaries such as Della Torre, he still created his own style. His work was, indeed, influenced by the several philosophies and theories prevailing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, Da Vinci possessed a unique imagination that separated him from the rest.
His obsession with mechanics could relate to his biomechanical obsession of explaining the human body with mechanical models. This originality is often questioned and makes people wonder if Leonardo wasn’t maybe planning on creating something bigger, some sort of perfect human machine.
The fifteenth century stands alone between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In terms of anatomical progress, this century was not as rich as the following or the immediately preceding ones. The two main features of this century are the rejections of ancient authorities and of scholastic theories in favor of an emphasis on practice.
The humanists of the fifteenth century neglected works from predecessors and looked at Galen’s and Hippocrates’ theories, which remained the pillars of Italian Renaissance anatomical science due to their undeniable stability and flexibility. Hence, most of Leonardo’s contemporary anatomists accepted Galenic theories, which were revived in 1490 with the increased interest in theory, in formal definitions and in citations of authorities. Their strong theoretical basis allowed for specific changes and disagreements without necessarily conflicting with the whole theory.
Anatomy had a low priority in the medical hierarchy. It did not belong to its traditional four major divisions-physiology, hygiene, aetiology or pathology and therapeutics. One reason for anatomy’s low esteem was the disgust that it provoked. As Volcher Coiter expressed in 1572, anatomy was “unworthy of man.” Dissecting a body was, therefore, only viewed as a punishment and applied exclusively to condemned criminals, hereby elongating their sufferings into death during execution. Dissecting had not reached the aura that it gained later in the sixteenth century when it became more popular and started to lose its taboos.
The arrival of the humanist Andreas Vesalius in Padua helped to promote anatomy and to use it in the revival of humanist medicine. Indeed, doctors and many artists such as Leonardo da Vinci gained interest in anatomy not only as a teaching subject but also as a research field.
The sixteenth century saw a new generation of true anatomists-Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Massa- who worked in private, and extracted all the information they could from every body they dissected. These anatomists were often called naturalists due to their curious method of unconditional search for the very nature of the human body. However, two main schools of thought existed among Leonardo’s contemporaries. Celsus, a roman author, explains well the difference between these empirics and natural philosophers. The first group, the “empirics” denied the value of physiological theory. They were convinced that trial-and-error empirism was the only remedy to cure. They also rejected dissection as a means of obtaining knowledge for the treatment of the body. The second group, the “natural philosophers” insisted that a thorough understanding of the inner workings of the human body was required to heal a patient from a sickness. Leonardo was certainly influenced by these two trains of thought but his deeper nature proved that he might have been closer to the “natural philosophers” than to Celsus or the “empirics”, for he believed in getting to know the secret of life. However, he believed, as Celsus did, that natural philosophers wasted too many words at the expense of clarity.
Leonardo was not alone in his anatomical research. On the contrary, he was very influenced by many of his contemporaries. From Aristotle’s History of animals, he adopted the diagram of genitalia whereas his coitus figures come from Plato’s Timaeus.
Leonardo used Mondino’s anatomy in Ketham’s fasciculo de medicina (Venice, 1494) for his tree of the vessels.His muscle studies in Florence were inspired by Follaiuolo and Verrocchio as well. But Leonardo was perhaps most influenced by Marcantonio de La Torre with whom he worked. Marcantonio’s Galenism was responsible for Leonardo’s rejection of the penile erection theory. Marcantonio was perhaps also responsible for Leonardo’s renewed interest in anatomy, and for his attempts in 1510 to publish his anatomies.
In McMurrich’s words, it was Leonardo’s “habit of observation that made him a great anatomist.” (Kemp, ‘Il Concetto Dell’anima’in Leonardo’s Early Skull Studies, p115) Leonardo was quoted saying: ”Do not busy yourself with things belonging to the eyes by making them enter through the ears,” which was contradictory to the method of teaching anatomy where the professor would sit on a chair and read the entry from Galen.
Leonardo’s method of thinking visually and representing in drawings what he wanted to demonstrate perfectly made Heydenreich believe that “practical anatomy for the artist was Leonardo’s starting point” and that this developed into a form of “visual science” in which the artist used “the sensory organs as the instruments of objective examination.” (Kemp, M. Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo’s Late Anatomies) When discussing his plan to show the vertebrae from three directions, he affirms that his detailed representations “will give a true knowledge of their shapes that neither the ancient writers (Galen) nor the moderns (Marcantonio) would ever have been able to give without an immense, tiresome, and confused amount of writing and time.” (Kemp, M. Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo’s Late Anatomies, p.215).
Leonardo’s ultimate goal was to write an anatomical book that would demonstrate the entire human body. His first anatomical drawings followed the conventions of architectural perfection. His studies of the skull dating from this period (1489) show his naturalistic nature of observation. He established a perfect parallelism between the requirements for good architecture and the cure of ailments. He said: “health is maintained by a balanced equilibrium and harmony of the elements… and one with a good knowledge of these conditions will be better able to effect a repair than one who is lacking this ” ( Kemp, ‘Il Concetto Dell’anima’in Leonardo’s Early Skull Studies, p.116).
Leonardo’s originality as an anatomist is best revealed through his drawings and descriptions accompanying each of them. He did not believe in the use of too many words to describe his ideas. The few words he used were directly related to the drawings and expressed mechanical and technical ideas. For instance, he referred to muscles with words such as “springs” and “wires” in order to convey the idea of a machine.
As a mathematical supplement, Leonardo’s detailed measures of every single part of the body emphasized his desire to normalize the human body. This calculated approach could relate to an eventual plan to create a human machine. Leonardo experimented with pulleys, levers, mirrors, lenses, water and concluded that powers obey a “pyramidal” form of action: “all powers of nature have to be called pyramidal.”(Keele, v.I) Pacioli’s influence as a geometer gave him another tool with which to understand nature.
His geometric studies and understandings provided him with a key to better interpret nature including the effects of the four powers. More concrete examples such as his “cord diagram”(Keele, v.1 (136 recto)) in the shoulder reveal which muscles goes over or under which one. This drawing shows evidence for Leonardo’s biomechanical studies of the body.
Other examples include his study of the leg with the schematic representation of gears by the side (Keele, v.1 (31 verso)) or the drawings of gondolas to explain the rowing motion and the analysis of the wing that could eventually lead to flight.
The studies made on the frog for the foundation of movement or the study of a skewer thrust into a pig’s heart are also evidence of Leonardo’s mechanical obsession to explain all kinds of living mechanisms. His representations of human body members and organs were more or less complex mechanical structures governed by the laws of physics and serving a purpose within the microcosmos of the human being. It seemed as if he was trying to understand nature from a mechanical standpoint.
All the wires that are seen in his drawings but that actually don’t exist-and he knows it since he dissected himself- are probably good evidence that Leonardo was planning or thinking about eventually creating the perfect human machine. It seemed that he was drawing what he wanted to understand and what fitted into his conception of the perfect machine.
However, Leonardo’s machine had to have a source of energy or a device that gave it life and sustainability. The idea of the soul came as a means to put his machine alive. Leonardo’s machine with a soul was inspired from Plato’s Timaeus where it describes the ”brain and spiral ‘morrow’ as but a special form of bone ‘marrow’ in which ‘god implanted his divine seed.’ This marrow passes up and down the back and communicates its ‘universal seed stuff’.”
This soul is in the site of the Common Sense where all the senses converge and acts as the “battery” of this machine where nothing is useless and nothing is left to uncertainty. He reiterates his view of the soul as the natural generator and preserver of the life of the body. For him this “soul-force in the microcosmos of man is the result of a transformation of the four powers of physical energy in the macrocosmos of the world outside man.” (Notebooks, v.II)
Leonardo was a creative genius who constantly searched for ways to relate the human body to a machine.Although he followed some traditions and beliefs previously held Leonardo’s imagination pushed him to another level of thought that few were able to access. His numerous anatomical drawings gained value with time once they started to be better understood.
The only hypothesis we can have today is that Leonardo was probably dreaming and designing to build a human machine -without a soul- obeying the laws of physics and making use of all the discoveries he made. Leonardo’s anatomical drawings should be referred as biomechanical studies worth the attention of generations to come.
