Hirundo: The McGill Journal of Classical Studies, Vol.2 (2003)
Abstract
In comparing the Western medical tradition to the Chinese, one of the salient differences is in fact this Western emphasis on muscles. Muscularity, it seems, was a particularly Western preoccupation. There was no treatise dealing with muscles in the Chinese medical tradition, nor was there even a word for ‘muscle’ before contact with Western culture during the twentieth century. If muscularity is then a uniquely Western focus, how did this emphasis arise? The prominence of fantastically muscular figures in Western art suggests that muscularity was seen as essential to human identity. Yet this merely raises the question of how and why muscles became essential to the Western understanding of the body. A fuller appreciation of the importance of musculature in Western society can be gleaned from an examination of its roots in the philosophy and science of the body in ancient times.
To paint a proper portrait of a man, the Renaissance artist Leon Battista Alberti advised, “to first visualize their bony insides […], then attach tendons and muscles in their place and finally clothe the bones and muscles with flesh and skin.” In fact, so important was an understanding of the position of muscles, that Alberti compared a body without muscles to clothes without a person. “If to paint dressed figures you must draw them nude, so to paint nudes you must first situate the bones and muscles before you cover them with flesh and skin in order to show clearly where the muscles are.” Alberti was not alone in his concern with muscular anatomy. Western art abounds in paintings and sculptures of fan- tastically muscular figures. From the earliest surviving Greek art, such as Psiax’s sixth century BCE depiction of Herakles strangling the Nemean lion,through to the works of Alberi and beyond. TheWestern preoccupation with muscularity is perhaps best illustrated by a medical work of the Renaissance, the Muscle Man figures from Andreas Veslius’ De humani corporis fabrica.
Completed in 1542, the work is undoubtedly a watershed in Western medical history. It marks a turning point from the Galenic medical tradition, which had dominated European medicine throughout the MiddleAges, to the rise of modern scientific medicine. As Nutton has pointed out, however, Vesalius was a “Galenist in the true sense.” Though he intended his work as a criticism and correction of Galenic anatomy, Vesalius followed many of Galen’s precepts, not the least in the emphasis he placed on muscularity.
David Shanks
Hirundo: The McGill Journal of Classical Studies, Vol.2 (2003)
Abstract
In comparing the Western medical tradition to the Chinese, one of the salient differences is in fact this Western emphasis on muscles. Muscularity, it seems, was a particularly Western preoccupation. There was no treatise dealing with muscles in the Chinese medical tradition, nor was there even a word for ‘muscle’ before contact with Western culture during the twentieth century. If muscularity is then a uniquely Western focus, how did this emphasis arise? The prominence of fantastically muscular figures in Western art suggests that muscularity was seen as essential to human identity. Yet this merely raises the question of how and why muscles became essential to the Western understanding of the body. A fuller appreciation of the importance of musculature in Western society can be gleaned from an examination of its roots in the philosophy and science of the body in ancient times.
To paint a proper portrait of a man, the Renaissance artist Leon Battista Alberti advised, “to first visualize their bony insides […], then attach tendons and muscles in their place and finally clothe the bones and muscles with flesh and skin.” In fact, so important was an understanding of the position of muscles, that Alberti compared a body without muscles to clothes without a person. “If to paint dressed figures you must draw them nude, so to paint nudes you must first situate the bones and muscles before you cover them with flesh and skin in order to show clearly where the muscles are.” Alberti was not alone in his concern with muscular anatomy. Western art abounds in paintings and sculptures of fan- tastically muscular figures. From the earliest surviving Greek art, such as Psiax’s sixth century BCE depiction of Herakles strangling the Nemean lion,through to the works of Alberi and beyond. TheWestern preoccupation with muscularity is perhaps best illustrated by a medical work of the Renaissance, the Muscle Man figures from Andreas Veslius’ De humani corporis fabrica.
Completed in 1542, the work is undoubtedly a watershed in Western medical history. It marks a turning point from the Galenic medical tradition, which had dominated European medicine throughout the MiddleAges, to the rise of modern scientific medicine. As Nutton has pointed out, however, Vesalius was a “Galenist in the true sense.” Though he intended his work as a criticism and correction of Galenic anatomy, Vesalius followed many of Galen’s precepts, not the least in the emphasis he placed on muscularity.
Click here to read this article from Hirundo
Sponsored Content