Caroline Babcock

This paper examines Dr. Nicolas Venette's La Génération de l'homme ou Tableau de l'amour conjugal (1687), a 17th century marital hygiene treatise considered to be among the first works of French sexology. Venette's text became one of the most influential in the 18th century for educating women and men on their sexuality, published in over 130 editions, many in England and France. This text and its striking plates have nonetheless received insufficient scholarly attention. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the text and its accompanying engravings.

Art historian Caroline Babcock will present to visitors Lister's anatomical drawings in relation to different traditions of looking at the body. She will discuss Lister's consciousness of the history of anatomical illustration in light of his drawings after the influential 18th century anatomy atlas of Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (plates from the English Edition will be on display) as well as the influence of his engagement with microscopy on his work.

The talk will discuss the series of anatomical engravings produced for the English edition of Albinus' influential anatomical atlas, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani (London: 1749), within the debate over the importance of the anatomical illustrator's presence during dissection and the technical difficulties it posed. Spawned by the appearance of the first illustrated anatomy texts in Europe, especially Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543), this debate centered around the new role of anatomical illustration and a concern for the image's substitution for instruction from the corpse proper in the anatomy theater. Contention over the role of artistic witness to the human form persisted for centuries, sustained by the continuing difficulty obtaining bodies for demonstration.