One of the greatest and most amazing anatomical works

MASCAGNI, Paolo.

Anatomia Universa: Anatomiae Universae Pauli Mascagni Icones.

Pisa: Apud Nicolaus Capurro, 1823.

1st Edition. No Binding. Very Good. Item #002659

Atlas volume. Double elephant folio (985 x 715 mm). 2 sheets of text (engraved title and engraved dedication), 9 original cover sheets with printed paper labels of the fascicle wrappers, and 88 sheets of fine engraved plates of anatomical illustrations, of which 44 are coloured and 44 dublicated in outlines. The unbound sheets are housed in a wood-enforced custom-made cassette. The separately published text-volumes of much smaller size are not included here. Title, dedication and a few plates with paper repairs outside plate-marks, little brown-staining to first 5 outline plates, minor occasional spotting, finger- and dust-soiling, one plate foxed, small dampstain to outer blank corner of about 20 plates. All engraved plates with a small round blindstamp in lower right corner. An outstanding, complete set. ----

Garrison-Morton 409.1; Wellcome IV, p.73; Heirs of Hippocrates 1102; Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Body, pp. 387-90. FIRST EDITION of Mascagni's magnus opus and one of the greatest and most amazing anatomical works . It was among two other major works by Mascagni that were left unfinished at his death in 1815. Responsibility for editing the Anatomia universa was given to Antommarchi, the physician who had been Mascagni's prosector and who assisted him in preparing another work, the anatomy for artists. In 1822, Mascagni's heirs sold the rights to the Anatomia universa to Andrea Vaccá-Berlinghieri, Giacomo Barzellotti, and Giovanni Rosini, professors at the faculty of Pisa. "It was these three individuals who prepared the present work. In the meantime, Antommarchi, who had taken three sets of plates with him to St. Helena to prepare them for publication, disregarded the court ruling and published his own edition of the plates at Paris between 1823 and 1826 without giving any credit to Mascagni. The forty-five plates of the Antommarchi edition were produced by lithography and fall short technically of the excellent copper engravings in the present work. In addition, twenty-four figures in Mascagni's anatomy are omitted from Antommarchi's work. Each of the forty-four exquisite plates in the present work is hand-colored in the standard colors for representing anatomical structures--red, white, and blue. Each of the colored plates is also accompanied by a duplicate outline plate which contains nomenclature for identifying the anatomical parts from the accompanying volume of text [not included here] ... The plates are so large that a man five and one-half feet tall can be composed if three of the plates are joined together. Many of the plates are signed by Antonio Serantoni, artist and engraver, while others have no signature at all and at least one plate names Joseph Canacci as engraver beside the artist, Serantoni. According to the editors, Mascagni delayed publishing this magnificent work because he was hoping that it would be possible to make his plates by means of the color print alone." (Heirs of Hippocrates 1102).
"The size of the bodies is assumed to be three Tuscan braccie, equal to five feet, five inches, Parisian measurement, but such parts as are represented separately are sometimes drawn upon a larger scale. The sheets are so large that an entire body can be composed out of three of them when they are joined together. The muscles are drawn on a flesh-colored background produced with the crayon (by means of the roulette) and are further illuminated by means of the brush. The viscera are faithfully represented: vessels and nerves are shown in red, blue and white, the colors commonly used to represent anatomic subjects... This large anatomic work is unique even today, but it is certainly expensive and inconvenient for practical uses... As the editors assure the reader, it is chiefly recommended to the practicing physician and the surgeon. It may be called complete since nothing, except microscopic anatomy, histology, and the lymphatics of the skin have been omitted. Even the pregnant uterus, the placenta, and the fetus are represented in several illustrations. According to the editors' preface, Mascagni was believed to have delayed the publication of the work because he was always hoping to make his plates without the use of the brush, by means of the color print alone" (Choulant-Frank, pp. 318-19).
The print run was very limited, given the very high cost of the book, which was sold to the astronomical figure of 2,520 gold francs (equivalent to about 750 grams of gold or about 20 thousands USD). I can thus be regarded as the most expensive anatomical work ever produced. The atlas is very rare at auction. Only a single complete copy (with the text volumes) can be traced: the Irwin Pincus copy, sold 2004 at Christie's NY for US$ 95,600.
According to Garrison-Morton, "those with the plates hand-coloured by the artist, Antonio Serrantoni, are among the most breathtakingly beautiful of all anatomical studies." In fact, Tabula III Viscera (exploded torso) was the most downloaded image so far from the collection of more than 100,000 that the Wellcome Library in London made available under an open license in 2014. (see openglam.org/2014/06/10/the-wellcome-librarys-top-10-open-images-2). This atlas volume comes in a special custom-made wooden transport box.

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