There's a fine line between the horrible and the sublime, and Joanna Ebenstein's Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy walks it. New York Times Book Review For centuries, humankind has sought to know itself through an understanding of the body, in sickness and in health, inside and out. This fascination left in its wake a rich body of artworks that demonstrate not only the facts of the human body, but also the ways in which our ideas about the body and its proper representation have changed over time. At times both beautiful and unsettling, illustrated anatomy continues to hold our interest today, and is frequently referenced in popula ..

Death is an inevitable fact of life. Throughout the centuries, humanity has sought to understand this sobering thought through art and ritual. The theme of memento mori informs medieval Danse Macabre, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Renaissance paintings of dissected corpses and "anatomical Eves," Gothic literature, funeral effigies, Halloween, and paintings of the Last Judgment. Deceased ancestors are celebrated in the Mexican Day of the Dead, while the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to secure their afterlife. br br A volume of unprecedented breadth and sinister beauty, Death: A Graveside Companion examines a staggering range of cultural attitudes ..

A lavishly illustrated guide to the magnum opus of the great seventeenth-century anatomist, master embalmer, artist, and collector of specimens. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was a celebrated Dutch anatomist, master embalmer, and museologist. He is best remembered today for strange tableaux, crafted from fetal skeletons and other human remains, that flicker provocatively at the edges of science, art, and memento mori . Ruysch exhibited these pieces, along with hundreds of other artful specimens, in his home museum and catalogued them in his lavishly illustrated Thesaurus Anatomicus . This book offers the first English translation of Ruysch's guide to his collect ..