Five Centuries of Medicine in Art
From the collection of Bruce and Lois Fye

April 24 – August 22, 2010
Onofrio Gallery

This show features more than 250 prints and engravings depicting a broad range of medical themes. Selected from one of the world‘s largest collections on the subject, the works span five centuries: from a 1493 German woodcut The Dance of Death to Rosemary Covey‘s 1998 wood engraving Antigenic Shift. Most of the prints in the exhibit were produced in the 18th and 19th centuries by artists and craftsmen who used various engraving, etching, or lithography techniques. They are grouped thematically with major sections devoted to anatomy, patients in various contexts, nurses, portraits of physicians, surgical treatment and other therapies, military medicine, caricatures, and patent medicine advertisements.

Artists seeking to depict the human form have studied anatomy formally or informally for centuries. Perceptions and representations of human anatomy were revolutionized in 1543 when Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica. The exhibit includes exquisite impressions from the original 16th-century woodblocks that were destroyed during World War Two. A large copperplate engraving from Bidloo‘s 1685 anatomical atlas includes several detailed images of dissected hearts. Two huge color mezzotints printed by Gautier in 1759 depict the external and internal anatomy of a male and female in a most dramatic fashion. Lithographs produced in Paris by Bourgery between 1831 and 1854 are stunning because of their remarkable realism and exquisite hand coloring.

Portraits of physicians from antiquity to modern times include a 1596 engraving of Hippocrates and a 1949 lithograph of French surgeon René Leriche signed by Henri Matisse, his patient. Scientific and therapeutic advances are represented by images of Vesalius staring at a crucifix as he rests his hand on a cadaver, William Harvey describing his theory of the circulation of the blood to King Charles I, Edward Jenner vaccinating a child in 1796, René Laennec using the stethoscope he invented in 1816, and Louis Pasteur studying bacteria in his laboratory in 1885.

A section entitled "The Cycle of Life" includes images of birth, childhood, adulthood, old age, and death. Two highlights of this part of the exhibit are Albrecht Dürer‘s 1511 woodcut The Death of the Virgin and Rembrandt‘s 1639 etching with the same title. Rembrandt‘s image drew upon Dürer‘s depiction of the scene with one very significant difference: the Dutch artist added a doctor who is feeling the dying Virgin‘s pulse. Images dealing with military medicine include a Winslow Homer wood engraving of a Civil War surgeon at work in the field, battle scenes from various conflicts over the centuries, and large World War One posters urging citizens to support the Red Cross.

Several 19th-century ads for "patent medicines" are notable from the standpoint of graphic design and for claims that the products they promoted cured almost every ailment. One of the most engaging sections of the exhibit includes more than thirty 18th and 19th -century caricatures by George Cruikshank, Honoré Daumier, James Gilray, William Hogarth, and Thomas Rowlandson among others. Most of the caricatures are hand colored, and many include captions satirizing doctors and quacks or the treatments they prescribed.