Grieving Skeleton by Louis-Jacques Goussier

Grieving Skeleton by Louis-Jacques Goussier

C. 1751

Engraving with Etching

At once anatomical study and meditation on mortality, Plate III, Anatomie, from the Encyclopédie portrays a human skeleton in a bowed, grieving stance, its head cradled in its hands against a pastoral landscape. The figure is set within a naturalistic landscape and is accompanied by small numerical annotations that correspond to explanatory notes in the original text identifying bones and joints. The composition is a printed reproduction after an earlier Renaissance anatomical woodcut, ultimately derived from Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), and translated into engraved form for inclusion in the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie (1751–1772) under the direction of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Its engraved execution reflects the collaborative workshop practice of the Encyclopédie, in which earlier visual sources were adapted and redistributed through print.

The image originates in Vesalius’s groundbreaking anatomical atlas published in Basel in 1543, a work that revolutionized the study of human anatomy by replacing schematic medieval diagrams with direct observation of the human body. The original woodcut imagery, often attributed to Jan Stephan van Calcar, a student of Titian, combined scientific precision with expressive, theatrical poses that emphasized both anatomical structure and existential meaning. The “grieving skeleton” functions as a memento mori, a meditation on human mortality that reflects Renaissance humanism’s fusion of empirical science and philosophical reflection. Its later reproduction in the Encyclopédie demonstrates how Enlightenment editors repurposed earlier Renaissance scientific imagery to broaden access to medical knowledge and reinforce the educational mission of making specialized anatomical learning widely available through print culture.

Dimensions: H 15” x 10 ¼” W

Condition: insect damage on bottom right, some foxing consistent with age