Pictorial Wit in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven,
Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1978).
anatomy Renaissance anatomists worked almost exclu-
sively in the tradition established by the 2nd-century
Greek physician Galen (see GALENISM, RENAISSANCE). The
tradition is clearly seen in the Anathomia (1316) of
Mondino de’ Luzzi, the leading textbook of the early Re-
naissance. It suffered from two basic weaknesses. In the
first place, because of constraints on human DISSECTION,
anatomists had often been forced to work with Barbary
apes and domestic animals. For this reason they readily
followed Galen in describing the rete mirabile, a vascular
structure they had all supposedly seen at the base of the
human brain, despite the fact that it is found in the ox and
the sheep but not in man. Once such fictions as the rete
mirabile and the five-lobed liver entered the literature,
they seemed impossible to eliminate. Secondly, anatomy
was made to serve the misguided Galenic physiology. If
Galen’s system needed septal pores to allow blood to pass
directly from the right to the left side of the heart, they
were conveniently “seen” and reported. To overcome these
difficulties it would be necessary to prefer the evidence of
nature to the authority of an ancient textbook.
The first real signs of such a transfer of allegiance can
be seen in the early 16th century. Monographs revealing
this tendency were produced by LEONARDO DA VINCI,
Berengar of Carpi (died 1530), Charles ESTIENNE, Gunther
of Andernach (1487–1584), Jacobus Sylvius (1478–1555),
and, above all, VESALIUS. The new-style monograph used
the full resources of Renaissance artists and printers to
provide, for the first time, detailed realistic illustrations,
whereas earlier works had provided no more than ex-
tremely crude stylized diagrams. Moreover, anatomy was
becoming a subject of serious artistic study in its own
right, with Leonardo and Antonio del POLLAIUOLOleading
the way, followed closely by MICHELANGELO. A detailed ac-
count of the fruits of anatomical studies for artists appears
in LOMAZZO’s Trattato (1584). The first printed anatomical
figures appeared in the Fasciculo de medicina (1493); 50
years later the De fabrica of Vesalius contained some 250
detailed blocks by Jan Steven van CALCAR. At last
anatomists had something objective against which to
judge their own observations. They soon came to realize
that items such as septal pores and five-lobed livers could
not be found in the human body.
Once having seen that the traditional account of
human anatomy was questionable, anatomists could begin
the serious task of restructuring their discipline. Part of
this task involved the construction of a new vocabulary.
Many terms such as “pancreas” and “thyroid” came from
Galen himself; others came from Arabic and Hebrew
sources; the bulk, however, came from Renaissance
anatomists. The Renaissance also saw the emergence of
the new discipline of comparative anatomy. BELONin 1551
had written on the anatomy of marine animals, while
Carlo Ruini in his Anatomia del cavallo (1599) tackled the
anatomy of the horse. On the basis of such detailed mono-
graphs Giulio Casserio (1561–1616) could at last present
genuinely comparative material in his De vocis auditusque
organis (1601), a study of the vocal and auditory organs of
man, cow, horse, dog, hare, cat, goose, mouse, and pig.
Further reading: Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body:
Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning (Chicago, Ill.:
University of Chicago Press, 1999); Jonathan Sawday, The
Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Re-
naissance Culture (London and New York: Routledge,
1997).Andrea da Milano See BREGNO, ANDREAAndrea del Castagno (1417/19–1457) Italian painter
Castagno, so named after his birthplace, was an important
innovator like MASACCIObefore him; he introduced a
rugged vitality into Florentine painting. Most of
Castagno’s few surviving paintings and documented lost
works are frescoes, including his earliest known commis-
sion, the effigies of hanged criminals for the façade of the
Bargello (then the communal prison) in Florence in 1440
(now lost). Castagno’s serious and heroic figures and in-
terest in movement are already apparent in his earliest
frescoes at the chapel of San Tarasio at San Zaccaria,
Venice (1442, in collaboration with the little-known
Francesco da Faenza). His Last Supper with Scenes of the
Passion, which fills the end wall of the refectory at Sant’
Apollonia, Florence (1440s), is painted in an unusually
dark and rich palette and reveals his skill in difficult per-
spective effects (for which he was praised by Cristoforo
LANDINOin 1481), his taste for moments of intense drama,
and his involvement in the antiquarianism of the early Re-
naissance in Florence. The Trinity Adored by St. Jerome and
Two Female Saints (c. 1454; SS. Annunziata, Florence), a
penitential subject, combines a mood of grave intensity
with dramatic foreshortening, qualities also noted in
Castagno’s moving and tragic Lamentation, a design for a
stained glass rondel in the drum of the dome of Florence
cathedral (1440), in a program that includes designs by
DONATELLO, GHIBERTI, and UCCELLO.
Castagno’s work in Rome for Pope Nicholas V in 1454
has been identified as a much restored architectural deco-
ration in the Biblioteca Graeca of the Vatican palace.
Landino also praised Castagno for a technique full of
spontaneity and liveliness and his ability to create figures
which express movement; these traits are best seen in the
Victorious David (c. 1450; National Gallery, Washington),
one of the few surviving Quattrocento parade shields, and
the EQUESTRIAN MONUMENT for Niccolò da Tolentino
(fresco, 1455–56; Florence cathedral), which is a pendant
and a foil for Uccello’s Sir John Hawkwood. The Famous
Men and Women frescoes from the Villa Carducci (c. 1450;1166 aannaattoommyy