An anatomist among the artists

摘要

When the newly founded Royal Academy of Arts appointed William Hunter, the Queen's obstetrician, to be their first Professor of Anatomy in 1769, they were following European precedent, albeit belatedly. From the sixteenth century onwards, academies of fine arts, dedicated to elevating art from craft to intellectual pursuit, had taught anatomy, perspective and other branches of knowledge deemed essential for the 'learned' painter or sculptor. No doubt the academy expected its new professor to 'stick to his last' — a phrase derived from Pliny's anecdote about Apelles' reply to a shoemaker. When a cobbler criticized the great Greek painter for mistakes in his portrayal of the sandal, Apelles was happy to listen, but when the artisan went on the criticize the painting of a leg, the painter's riposte was blunt. Hunter's specialist 'last' would have been to instruct aspiring masters in the structures of the human body, above all the bones and muscles that determined posture and expression.