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PrintedBodiesandtheMaterialityofEarlyModernPrints
By Suzanne Karr Schmidt , from Volume 1, Number 1

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Figs 1, 2, 3. Lucas Kilian, Catoptri Microcosmici (Visio Prima, Visio Secunda, Visio Tertia) (1613), three anatomy broadsides composed of engraving and

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cream wove paper. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Dr. Ira Frank, 1944.461, 1944.462 and 1944.521.

Welcome to the Print Club

In 1613, the Augsburg engraver Lucas Kilian produced a set of three broadsheets of human anatomy that are some of
the most intricate early examples of interactive prints extant. Composed of several layers of engraving, letterpress and
etching that were cut, stacked, and glued together as liftable flaps, these prints allowed the viewer to dissect male and
female corpses as a didactic exercise. Though primarily intended for medical students, the sheets also served curious

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general audiences, as they teemed with decorative and moralizing addenda. Works such as these have largely been

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ignored or dismissed as novelties by an art history that has seen prints primarily as fuel for connoisseurship or as a

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locus of hidden narratives rather than as material objects in the world.1 But objects they were and very much remain.
Currently, however, there is a burgeoning interest in
the materiality of printed images from the first two
centuries of European printmaking, roughly 15th
century to 18th century. (Historians refer to this period
as Early Modern, which creates a good deal of
confusion when for most of the art world Modern
means 20th century. In this article, early modern
means circa 1460 to circa 1760.) At the 2010 College
Art Association conference, the author co-chaired a
double session of lectures with Lia Markey of the
University of Pennsylvania on the material presence of
early modern prints. The works discussed included
prints pasted down onto (or into) small boxes for
personal belongings; prints that were cut up,
rearranged, and pasted in albums; images that were
printed on luxurious materials like vellum or satin, and
engravings pulled from precious metal plates.
(Tellingly, most of the speakers had museum
affiliations, guaranteeing hands-on access to actual
objects.) Over the last few years exhibitions such as
Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color; Grand Scale:
Monumental Woodcuts in the Age of Drer and Titian;
and The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern
Engraver have tackled the specific physical attributes
2

of early prints.

The current exhibition at the Art

Institute of Chicago, Altered and Adorned: Using

Renaissance Prints in Daily Life, (April 30-July 10,
Fig. 2b. Visio Secunda, detail of flaps and organs.

2011) explores the myriad ways in which prints were

active participants in the daily life of the Renaissance.

To understand the role of prints such as the Kilian anatomy engravings, it is important to recognize that early modern
prints were not made to be matted and framed behind glass; they were active participants in the world, serving a wide
variety of decorative, educational, and devotional purposes. Many were printed as surfaces to be cut out and applied
to other things: Hans Sebald Behams porthole-like woodcut of the Womens Bath might have been intended as

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decoration for a wall or for a box. Massive multi-sheet prints like Titians twelve-part woodcut of Pharaohs Army
Drowning in the Red Sea, on the other hand, were too large for display anywhere except on walls, where they would
have been pasted directly to the surface to mimic the appearance of painting, fresco or tapestry. The 1466 Large
Madonna of Einsiedeln engraving by Master E.S is believed to be the earliest dated print relating to a specific religious
site and is evidence of devotional practices of the time, though a later, anonymous eighteenth century woodcut of the
same cult figure is even more revealing of attitudes and behaviors: outfitted in printed fabric and colorful metal inserts,
it is adorned in much the way the Madonna sculpture itself would have been on festive occasions. But the most
interactive of early prints were those produced with movable partsflaps, dials and other components that were made
to be cut out and constructed by the buyer or the buyers bookbinder (even printed books of the time were sold as
stacks of loose sheets to be bound to taste). Such creative uses of print began almost as soon as printmaking itself
became viable.

Flaps worked well for before-and-after views of comic or erotic situationsincluding a popular late sixteenth-century
genre of Venetian Courtesans with liftable skirtsbut they were more often employed for proto-scientific purposes.
Numerous dial-based calendars survive, such as those meant to enable a lay person to calculate the date of the next
Easter. Scientific instruments were made with printed veneers pasted onto pasteboard or wooden cores. Sundials
especially came in all portable shapes and sizes, including an octahedral prism that told time on seven of its faces.
(This application preceded by at least 475 years the woven paper octahedron by Seon Chung and the disposable
wristwatches by Patrick Killoran in The Paper Sculpture Book published by Cabinet Magazine).

Finally, there were

the anatomy flap printsroughly 65 known male and female pairs designed and pirated throughout Europe from the mid
fifteenth into the seventeenth century. (Animated demonstrations of several of the early works can be seen on the
Wellcome Library site.
Kilians trio of anatomical broadsheets is the showiest,
largest, and likely most expensive of these prints to
have survived, and the Art Institute of Chicago is
happily in possession of a rare first-state impression.
(Figs 1, 2, 3). They boast over a hundred
superimposed organ flaps (and thus were so
complicated that they had to be sold pre-assembled by
the publisher). They offered their audience a heady
mix of allegorical iconography and anatomy made
more potent by their removable organs and naked
flesh. The skulls under Adam and Eves feet (Figs 2a,
3a), the tiny kings scepter paired with a gravediggers shovel (Fig.1a), and the resurrected phoenix

Fig. 2a. Visio Secunda, detail of skull.

between Eves legs (Fig. 3a), emphasize the

ephemerality of the life that bodies provide.
While most anatomy flap prints went through several
reprintings, it usually happened within a century of
their creation. The success of Kilians work is clear
from its longevity: originally published in 1613 as three
separate broadsheets (the version owned by the AIC),
it inspired two explanatory pamphlets appearing in
1615 to identify the parts of the body marked with
letters on the prints.

The plates reappeared in book

form in 1619, augmented with additional images of

organs and other engraved details, and then went
through six subsequent unchanged reprintings
accompanied by German and Latin text. A second set
of plates was copied from the 1613 edition for the
Netherlandish and English markets. Finally, a century
and half after their creation, eight surviving plates
were reprinted as uncut sheets in a 1754 Italian work

Fig. 3a. Visio Tertia, detail of skull (flap open) and phoenix.

on anatomy spuriously attributed to the sixteenthcentury Archangelo Piccolomini.

The fascination

these works exerted seems to have long outlived the

accuracy of their anatomical content.
The first of the three sheets, titled Visio Prima (First
Vision) shows a male and a female figure, modeled
after Albrecht Drers 1504 Adam and Eve, standing
on plinths that flank a large truncated (and
impregnated) female torso. The torso is covered by a
Medusa-head flap (lacking in the AIC impression),
beneath a cloud of angels in glory that surround a flap
roundel labeled Yahweh in Hebrew letters. A
schematic eye and ear appear to the upper left and
right and a heart in the center. Each of these figures

Fig. 1a. Visio Prima, detail of scepter and shovel.

contains as many as seven flaps that open out of the

main sheet. The second and third Visions show larger-scale images of Adam and Eve respectively, each standing on
a skull with its own flaps. (Figs 2a, 3a) Adam demonstrates the workings of the heart on the left-hand side; Eve offers
a diagram of the lungs. Each of the main figures sports flaps of billowing cloth to protect the prudish or squeamish
viewer, and to keep the anatomical bits in place. To make the broadsheets, the main engravings, entitled Catoptri
Microcosmici, or Mirrors of the Microcosm, were pasted down onto a second sheet with letterpress titles and filigreed
woodcut borders.

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The idea of using printed flaps to explore anatomy was

not new. In 1538, almost a century earlier, Heinrich
Vogtherr the Elder had produced an extremely popular
(and much pirated) male and female pair of woodcut flap
broadsides in Strasbourg, but his anatomy bore little
resemblance to reality, and was almost immediately
superseded by the teachings of Andreas Vesalius.
Vesalius influential de Humani Corporus Fabrica (On
the Fabric of the Human Body, 1543) revolutionized the
understanding of human anatomy. Like Vogtherr,
Vesalius employed superimposed flaps in the student
version of the Fabrica, and his summary of this text, the
Epitome of 1543, recommended animal skin or vellum
strips to reinforce the flaps.
While Kilian was the engraver of the broadsheets, the
designer of the anatomical content appears to have been
a medical doctor named Johannes Remmelin, though
Remmelin coyly denied responsibility until it was clear
that the prints were selling. By 1618, we know, they
were in the collection of the anatomy theater at Leiden.

In a preface to the 1619 book edition, Remmelin wrote

that he condescended to correct the earlier edition, but
in fact the anatomical details of the main plates (as seen
in the 1754 restrikes) are all but unchanged (Figs 1, 4.)
The layers are slightly reduced for clarification, and the
allegories have been slightly elaborated (a tiny kings
head and skull were squeezed in beside the scepter and
shovel to remind the viewer, King Today, Dead
Fig. 3b. Visio Tertia, detail of open chest and smudge on genitals.

Tomorrow,) but it is on the whole the same set of flap

prints. Remmelins remarks suggest an attempt to
intensify interest in the new edition:

I never contemplated publication of the work, but fashioned it only for my own use .... but it happened that the
general talk of it among my friends caused this Catoptrum to be wrested away from me for inspection and
circulation, until, through their persuasion and at their expense, it began to be published, without my
knowledge, and to be enjoyed like an unripe fruit. 8

In fact the original edition displays Remmelins portrait on the plinth at the bottom left of the first sheet, Visio Prima,
with his initials below: I.R. Inventor. For the 1619 edition, the portrait was enlarged, and accompanied by the doctors
coat of arms on the right hand plinth. Remmelin is given equal billing to the publisher, Stephan Michelspacher, whose
full name appears below the right plinth. Lucas Kilian also appears on Remmelins plinth, as L.K. sculptor.
Intriguingly, the eighteenth-century restrikes of the 1619 plates show exactly how Kilian imposed many of the interior
flaps for printing,9 though they do not provide instructions sufficient for building the complete manikins from their
astonishingly tightly-organized components. (Figs 4-6) It is clear that the top sheet of each of the three broadsides
would be sliced open to furnish the upper level of the flaps, most of which show the skin. (Watermark evidence
confirms that the main engravings of the AIC impressions are all printed from the same paper type.) These prints were
then partially cut out to reveal the cavity below, leaving hinges on one side to secure the external flaps. The interior
flaps had been etched onto their plates wherever they fit, and printed on different, slightly thicker paper. These internal
organs were cut apart, glued together in bundles and then affixed to the verso of the main sheet. This layering allowed
the viewer to burrow ever deeper into the recesses of the human form and to lift the flaps up and out in every direction.
Earlier flap prints had clumsily attached the flaps to lift vertically from the neck, limiting the suggestion of interior
space. The 1619 book specifies that not all of the organs were meant to be glued downin fact, the heart and lungs
were to be located in a cavity for easy removal, guaranteeing a close encounter with these important body parts. Thus
it is all the more remarkable that the AIC sheet still has them. Eves removable lungs are printed on both sides and
open like a triptych to reveal even deeper parts. Many of the flaps open horizontally. Others, including the Yahweh
roundel at the top of the Visio Prima, lift upward, as does the phoenixs smoke cloud, which obscures Eves genitals in
the third print, and a large flower that hides Adams in the second. One of the surviving plates includes the inside of
Eves ribcage etched at the lower right. This would have been cut out and pasted onto the back of the frontal flap;
once the breastbone was cut, it became free to lift upward, while her breasts spread wide to either side, as if the
viewer were ripping open her ribcage in three dimensions on the operating table.
Though the printed flaps are unsigned, the 1754 uncut restrikes from the flap plates help confirm that the same artist
produced both the flaps and the main prints. While the surface of the three Visions was engraved, the interior layers
appear to be almost exclusively etched, a medium in which Kilian worked less frequently. In the five uncut organ plate
restrikes, the innards appear to be arranged purely by fit rather than by order of construction and, curiously, tiny
doodles fill the space around the organs in a sort of macabre horror vacui. Although they do not appear as visible flaps
in any impression known to the author, two variations on Remmelins coat of arms appear etched on separate plates,
perhaps to suggest his involvement in the design of those illustrations as well. (Figs. 5, 6) In some constructed
impressions of the 1619 state, the edges of smaller doodles and engraved lines of alphabet can be seen under and
around the pasted-in flaps: because there was too little empty space to cut cleanly around them, they were used as
makeshift tabs to secure the flaps. These creative doodles tie the underlying flaps back to Kilian. Though nearly
invisible in the finished product, images like the tiny beer stein, dancing bears and floral swags have their parallels in
his 1627 Alphabet book, as well as in a series of ornament prints Kilian produced around 1607. Stephan

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Michelspacher, the publisher of

the 1613 anatomy, must have
approached Kilian to carry out
the changes to the original
plates. The frontispiece to the
1615 handbook includes
anatomical vein-men similar in
stance, style and lettering to the
Visio Prima flaps. Remmelin
also continued publishing with
Michelspacher after 1619, so his
supposed displeasure with the
early printing does not appear to
have complicated their business
relationship.
The wear and tear on the AIC
impressions of the Kilian prints
suggests the set was, in fact,
used for study. The prints have
even been patched in places to
keep the flaps attached. A
continuous wormhole serves as
proof that the set has been
together for quite some time, if
not since its initial printing. As is
common among flap prints, a
few organs are missing, though
surprisingly not the loose ones
hidden in the interior of the
Adam and Eve bodies. Those
loose organs, however, have
migrated slightly, leaving Adam
literally in possession of Eves
heart. (Fig. 2b) Additionally, in

Fig. 4. Lucas Kilian, Catoptri Microcosmici plate (reprinted 1619), uncut, from 1754 pseudo-Piccolomino

the Visio Tertia, Eve appears to

text. Special Collections, Northwestern University Galter Health Sciences Library.

have attracted the attention of a

censorious individual. Despite the large plume of smoke
and the fluttering cloth flap that once covered her (but is
now missing) there is a large, thumb-print-sized smudge of
darkened brown material coating her genitals. (Fig. 3b) If
this was done out of religious conviction, the gesture
failed: it draws even more attention to the area. The
untouched restrike shows the objectionable details,
including pubic hair, as well as the banderole where the
flap of smoke was meant to be attached to the surface of
the engraving, and so to extend even more tantalizingly
into the viewers space. (Fig. 3c)
Kilian and Remmelins Catoptri Microcosmici represents
one of the last great interactive, even sculptural, print
Figs 5, 6. Lucas Kilian, Catoptri Microcosmici plates (reprinted 1619),

series of the early modern era, and studying it can tell us

uncut, from 1754 pseudo-Piccolomino text. Flap plate with alphabet

much about the way people have related to printed

marginalia and flap plate with rib cage detail.

images. It also suggests how much is to be gained through

careful observation of material particulars. Differences in

the paper, ink and other

colorants, as well as
accidental or intentional
variations in the quality of the
printing, are important aspects
of the works inherent
materiality, while inscriptions,
movable parts, and
subsequent damage highlight
residual evidence of use and
owner interaction. Not only do
prints have versos to consider,
the shape of images and
printing matrices are equally
important. This material
approach to researching prints
takes into consideration the
physical production and the
afterlife of the print,
interpreting it as an object

Fig. 3c. Lucas Kilian, Catoptri Microcosmici plates (reprinted 1619), uncut, from 1754 pseudo-Piccolomino
text. Special Collections, Northwestern University Galter Health Sciences Library.

rather than as
two-dimensional image or abstracted iconographical construct.

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Prints of the early modern era have too long been assessed purely in terms of connoisseurship and their logical place
in Adam von Bartschs peintre-graveur universe. Scholars consulting multiple impressions of the same print have done
so primarily to establish the differences and relative quality of each state of the image rather than to confront the
materiality of the objects. The current boom in exhaustive online databases of works on paper such as those included
in the British Museums searchable online collection or the Virtual Print Room at Wolfenbttel and Brunswick greatly
streamlines this type of comparative looking, but at the risk of further deracinating the image from the print as a whole.
There are compelling reasons to consider multiple impressions not just as examples of a type, but as objects with
specific histories. Handling early prints in person remains key to researching and understanding them, their initial
context and their continuing resonance. William Ivins famously defined the importance the print in terms of its role as
an exactly repeatable pictorial statement, but it is vital to remember that a prints physical history can only be revealed
impression by impression, page by page, flap by flap.

1. In David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, eds., The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe.
New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. xv-xvii., the Kilian prints were discussed, if cursorily, for their allegorical motifs
and the inherent violence suggested by cutting up printed bodies into so many pieces.
2. See: Susan Dackerman. Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance & Baroque Engravings,
Etchings & Woodcuts. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002; Larry Silver, Elizabeth
Wyckoff, and Lilian Armstrong. Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Drer and Titian. Wellesley: Davis
Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, 2008; Emily J. Peters, Evelyn Lincoln, and Andrew Raftery. The
Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650. Providence: Museum Of Art, Rhode Island
School Of Design, 2009.
3. The authors doctoral dissertation, ArtA Users Guide: Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the
Renaissance (Yale University 2006,) examined numerous impressions of these exceedingly rare prints and
reconstructed the early days of paper engineering (http://www.interactive-prints.org/index.html).
4. The Paper Sculpture Book: a complete exhibition in a book with 29 buildable sculptures. New York: Cabinet
Magazine and Independent Curators Incorporated, 2003
5.

The two manuals are always found bound together, suggesting both were published in 1615, by Stephan
Michelspacher: Elucidarius, Tabulis Synopticis, Microcosmici Laminis Incisi Aeneis, Admirandam Partium
Hominis Creaturarum Divinarum Praestantissimi Universarum Fabricam repraesentantis, Augsburg, 1614; Pinax
Microcosmographicus, hoc est, Admirandae Partium Hominis Creaturarum Divinarum praestantissimi
Universarum Fabricae, Augsburg, 1615.

6. Archangeli Piccolomini. Anatome integra, revisa, tabulis explanata et iconibus mirificam humani corporis
fabricam, ad ipsum naturae archetypum exprimentibus. Veronae, sumptib. Gabrielis Julii de Ferrariis, 1754.
7. Tim Huisman. The Finger of God: Anatomical Practice in 17th-Century Leiden. Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2009, pp.
38 and 50. Otto Heurnius acquired in August 12, 1618 a group of prints and books from Govert Basson for the
anatomy theater that included a set of the 1613 Remmelin/Kilian broadsheets and the 1614 manual.
8. Kenneth F. Russell. A Bibliography of Johann Remmelin the Anatomist. East St. Kilds, Vic. 3183, Australia: J.F.
Russell, 1991, p. 3.
9. See Andrea Carlino, Paper Bodies: A Catalogue of Anatomical Fugitive Sheets 1538-1687, trans. Noga Arikha,
Medical History, Supplement No. 19, 1999.

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