20 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the admiration of naturalists like Prof. Henke and Prof, von 

 Bruoke?* Are there not institutions maintained by the state 

 wherever art is systematically cultivated for the purpose of giv- 

 ili opportunity to train the eye on the cadaver to a clearer 

 perception of what can be seen in the living body beneath the 

 akin ? H a vo not three of the later members of this Academy been 

 ned in succession to give such instruction here in Ber- 

 lin ? Finally, have we not excellent manuals of anatomy pre- 



i especially for artists ? 

 But the most distinguished art- writer of our day, who assumes 

 a tone of authority that no Lessing exercised, and who enjoys at 

 home the honor and fame of a Lessing, Mr. Ruskin, in his lectures 

 at the Art School in Oxford, on the Relation of Science to Art, 

 expressly forbids his pupils busying themselves with anatomy. 

 Likewise, in his preface, he laments the deleterious influence 

 anatomy had on Mantegna and Diirer, in contrast with Botticelli 

 and Holbein, who kept themselves free from it. "The habit of 

 contemplating the anatomical structure of the human form," he 



later on, "is not only a hindrance but a degradation, and 

 has been essentially destructive to every school of art in which it 

 has been practiced " ; and he adds to this that under its influence 

 the painter, as in the case of Diirer, sees and portrays only the 

 skull in the face. "The artist should take every sort of view of 

 animals except one the butcher's view. He is never to think of 

 them as bones and meat." \ 



It would be a waste of time and trouble to refute such er- 

 rors, and demonstrate what an indispensable help the artist 

 finds in anatomy, without which he would be groping as in 

 a fog. It is very nice for him to depend upon his eyes, but 

 still better to have learned, for example, in what the female 

 skeleton is different from the male; why the knee-pan follows 

 the direction of the foot when the leg is stretched out, but does 

 not when it is bent ; why the profile of the upper arm with the 

 hand supine is different from the profile in pronation ; why the 

 furrows and wrinkles of the face run as they do in relation to the 

 muscles beneath them. Camper's facial angle, although it has 



di-throned for more important objects by Herr Virchow's 



' , furnishes a great deal of information. How, without 



acquaintance with the skull, a forehead can be modeled, or the 



rure of a forehead like that of the Jupiter of Otricoli or of the 



can be understood, is hardly comprehensible. It is true 



that anatomical forms may be abused by fantastic exaltation, as 



been often remarked with r espect to Michael Angelo's suc- 



Deutsche Bundachau, 1875, vol. v, p. 216; 1890, vol. Lrii, p. 26; vol. lxlv, p. 413. 

 % Tl \cst. Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, 188-7, pp. 



107, i > ri 



