First edition, considered the chef-d’oeuvre of Gautier, one of the grandest anatomical books published in the 18thcentury, illustrated with 20 visually arresting large plates including what the Surrealists called the Anatomical Angel, representing the muscles of the face, neck and throat, torso, and extremities, each accompanied by an explanatory text by Duverney (who worked with dissected cadavers), the anatomy lecturer from the Jardin du Roi.
Gautier completed the Myologie in two steps, first producing 8 plates of the upper part of the body (face, head, throat, etc.) and a second part on the lower part of the body including the extremities (torso, arms, and legs). As aforementioned, the Myologie contains one of the most famous images of the human body, the Ange Anatomique, a representation of a woman calmly posing with her back open revealing the muscles and bones “stripped out like an angel's wing, while she, with hair arranged neatly in the style of her day, looks back over her shoulder in a spirit of calm enquiry, showing the healthy complexion of an attractive face" (Franklin).
This is a deluxe copy, which was varnished by Gautier, a technique not often applied to plates in books, and which he proposed to customers at an additional charge; also, this copy has been bound in plano, avoiding thus the folds in the plates as in most copies. Varnished copies often don´t age well, this has not been the case here, where we find it in a very good state of conservation.
“La myologie reste sans conteste le chef-d’oeuvre de Gautier, le livre auquel il accorde le plus de soin, tant dans l’invention de ses images que dans le traitement de la technique” (Anatomie de la couleur).
Gautier d´Agoty (1717-1785):
This name is associated with some of the most groundbreaking efforts in print-making of the 18th century, he studied under LeBlon briefly, from whom he learned the basis of colour impressions.
“His colored mezzotints are often of very striking artistic power” (Garrison).
The plates “will always retain their value in the history of art and especially in the history of anatomic illustrations” (Choulant).
“Jacques Gautier d'Agoty was a color mezzotint engraver and painter. He began to engrave in 1736 and developed a theory for color mezzotints derived from that of LeBlon, under whom he studied briefly in 1738. His theories, unlike LeBlon's, tended to refute Newton's concepts of color, upon which LeBlon had based his three-color system. Gautier d'Agoty held chat the fundamental colors were black, blue, yellow, red, and white [the fifth color supplied by the white paper]. His early work was hampered in part by the patent on a similar color process held in France by LeBlon, but following LeBlon's death in 1741, Gaurier d'Agoty obtained a thirty-year patent on his process. Based upon his introduction of the fourth black plate, in 1749 he called himself ´Inventeur de l'Art de graver et imprimer les Tableaux à quatre couleurs.´
His color process was used to illustrate several anatomical works, botanical studies, and natural histories. He also reproduced sacred and mythological subjects and some portraits. Some of his color plates do not seem to be based on existing paintings but were taken directly from his own compositions. In the preparation of his later plates, he was assisted by his sons.” (D. R. R., and Dale R. Roylance. “The Eighteenth Century: Search for Tone.” Yale Art Gallery Bulletin 27/28 (1962): 24–34).
“Gautier's pictures seem to us to be in the tradition of the early gravida illustrations and the figures of Berengario and Charles Estienne--often attracting attention through sexual emphasis: dissected parts were placed within a living body, usually possessing a lively face, whose expression is sometimes quizzical, sometimes erotically inviting, sometimes serene, always with a romantic and elegant hair-style. In one of Gautier's plates there are two naked women, one standing with emphatic breasts and dissected pregnant uterus, the other sitting at her feet with open thighs so disposed as to exhibit her external genitalia. Such erotic figures may have also played a useful role in the sex education of physicians and others; they may be contrasted in their romantic extravagance of feeling with the matter-of-fact illustration in William Smellie's work (1754) an illustration that was often torn out by nineteenth century bowdlerizers. (Most previous illustrations of this area, such as those of Leonardo or Vesalius, were remarkably inaccurate.)” (Roberts & Tomlinson pp. 524-25).
Choulant-Frank, p. 270-74; Garrison-Morton 398; Singer 1-20 ; Wellcome p.97; B.N. Anatomie de la couleur, B.N.F. n°92-101.
