Andreas Vesalius
The founder of modern anatomy. Born in Brussels in 1514, Vesalius studied in Leuven, Paris and Padua and became professor Surgery and Anatomy in Padua at the age of 23.
Five years later, he published his opus magnum, the
This Fabrica is a blending of science, Ciceronian Latin, typography and art.
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In his splendid Fabrica Andreas Vesalius produced the most largest, beautiful
and faitful illustrations of the dissected human body yet seen. "Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt." "Genius lives on, all else is mortal."
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:
