Deborah Curtiss
Abstract: De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a seven-volume opus by Andreas Vesalius, published in 1543, is possibly the most elegant synthesis of science and visual art in the history of humankind. Today, the frontiers of discovery in the 21st century reside in the minutiae of the human brain and the magnitude of the cosmos. Similarly, vision and visual literacy played an essential and inestimable role in the development and revelations of observational science in the Renaissance when some inquisitive individuals of the 1500s, notably Leonardo and Vesalius, delved into the constructs of human and animal anatomy. And others—such as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo—looked to the heavens to reveal its mysteries. A brief history of these developments is followed by a creative exposition of their influences upon me as a visual artist.