Anatomy Lesson Paintings: A Survey of Progression in the Medical and Anatomical Fields

This study has emerged through a combination of art and science, visually and contextually analyzing anatomy lesson paintings as commemorations of physicians, artists, and medical and anatomical advancements. This study focuses on the works of five major artists through the Dutch Baroque and American Realist periods: Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins, Albert Sands Southworth, and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Chapter One begins with Andreas Vesalius, laying the groundwork for the depictions and spread of information for medical advances in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapters Two and Three respectively consider depictions of Baroque and then Realist advances in the medical field. The anatomy lessons examined are considered in relation to medical knowledge at the times of their completions, the varying ways that artists handled the subject matter, and the shift from dissections for anatomical knowledge to surgeries meant to improve the lives of living patients