Andreas Vesalius

The founder of modern anatomy.

Born in Brussels in 1514, Vesalius studied in Leuven, Paris and Padua and became professor of Surgery and Anatomy in Padua at the age of 23.
Five years later, he published his opus magnum, the

"De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri septem."

This Fabrica is a blend of science, Ciceronian Latin, typography and art.

In his splendid Fabrica Andreas Vesalius produced the largest, most beautiful and faithful illustrations of the dissected human body yet seen.

By dissecting the corpuses by his own hand, he saw with his own eyes the many errors in the ancient textbooks of Galenus and Mondinus.

Johan Stefan van Kalkar drew some of the sketches and Johannes Oporinus set the whole in a magnificent typographical layout.

To Vesalius no more fitting words could be dedicated than the epitaph engraved on the mourning skeletal figure of the Fabrica:

"Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt."

"Genius lives on, all else is mortal."