Annals of medical history . Volume i Fall 1917 Number 3 FIGURATIONS OF SKELETAL AND VISCERAL ANATOMY IN THE BOOKS OF HOURS By WILFRID M. DE VOYNICH & FIELDING H. GARRISON, HE memorable essayof Lessing (1769)and subsequentstudies have fairlywell proven that theancients representeddeath in art in a se-rene and beautifulway. Parkes Weber has latterly shownthat during the best period of Greekart the realistic representation of skel-etons and corpses was avoided, although,in the later Roman and Grseco-Romanfigurations, skeletons and shrivelled corpsesof skin and bone sometimes occur, asa whim
Annals of medical history . Volume i Fall 1917 Number 3 FIGURATIONS OF SKELETAL AND VISCERAL ANATOMY IN THE BOOKS OF HOURS By WILFRID M. DE VOYNICH & FIELDING H. GARRISON, HE memorable essayof Lessing (1769)and subsequentstudies have fairlywell proven that theancients representeddeath in art in a se-rene and beautifulway. Parkes Weber has latterly shownthat during the best period of Greekart the realistic representation of skel-etons and corpses was avoided, although,in the later Roman and Grseco-Romanfigurations, skeletons and shrivelled corpsesof skin and bone sometimes occur, asa whimsical memento mori device, ongems, vases, wine cups, In these, forinstance in the figures of skeletons orshades of dead philosophers on the Graeco-Roman silver wine cups of the Boscorealetreasure in the Louvre,2 the device is 1 F. Parkes Weber: Aspects of Death in Art andEpigram, 2. ed., London, 1914, 15-21. humorous, signifying, Parkes Weber main-tains, a degraded Epicureanism. But theancients never used the skeleton or theshrivelled skin-and-bone larva as a symbolof Death itself. This, as Parkes Weberinsists, was an innovation of the MiddleAges. Mediaeval figurat
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Keywords: ., bookauthorp, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmedicine
