Frederic Ruysch (1638-1731) was a Dutch botanist and anatomist, remembered mainly for his groundbreaking methods of anatomical preservation and the creation of his carefully arranged scenes incorporating human body parts. These remarkable ‘still life’ displays blurred the boundary between the demonstrative element of scientific preservation and the symbolic and allegorical of vanitas art. As well as his larger more elaborate anatomical displays (as seen above) he would also keep his specimens of limbs, fetuses and the carcasses of small animals carefully embalmed in individual glass jars. Offsetting the macabre contents he would create ‘flowering’ lids, decorating them with beads, fishes, shells, artificial flowers and lacy garments – the little scenes often echoing the life the jar’s contents had once known.
(Above image from the National Library of Medicine. Below images extracted from Ruysch’s Thesaurus animalium primus (1710) housed by the Internet Archive)
Operation Doorstep | The Spirit Photographs of William Hope | The Maps of Piri Reis | Dr Julius Neubronner's Miniature Pigeon Camera |
Art in Art | Huexotzinco Codex | Sessions for the Blind at Sunderland Museum | Eugène von Guérard's Australian Landscapes |
Landscape and Marine Views of Norway | The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy | Space Colony Art from the 1970s | Men in Wigs |
De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (1586) | Field Columbian Museum | Maps from Geographicus | Arnoldus Montanus' New and Unknown World (1671) |
World War II from the Air | Halloween Postcards | Engravings by Dominicus Custos | Kodak No.1 Circular Snapshots |
Kitab al-Bulhan or Book of Wonders (late 14thC.) | The Daddy Long Legs of Brighton | Amundsen's South Pole Expedition (1912) | A Catalogue of Polish Bishops |
Harry Clarke's illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe (1919) | The Embalming Jars of Frederik Ruysch (1710) | Labors of the Months from the Très Riches Heures (1416) |