Muscles of the neck, tongue and jaws. Colour mezzotint by J.F. Gautier d'Agoty after himself, 1745-1746.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty, published a series of anatomy plates using a colour mezzotint process which had first been developed by Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741), in whose workshop Gautier d'Agoty had served as an assistant. In 1737, Le Blon obtained a copyright to publish a complete colour anatomy atlas, which never appeared. To Le Blon's process, which used the three colours of red, yellow and blue, Gautier d'Agoty added black and claimed the process to be his own invention. The dissections were prepared by Jacques-Fran̨cois Duverney (d. 1748), a Parisian surgeon and demonstrator of anatomy and surgery at the Jardin du Roy. According to the "Avertisement", the principle aim of the Myologie complette was to "facilitate the study of Anatomy for all sorts of persons, above all students of medicine, surgery, painting and sculpture, all of those who, in a word, have the health and study of the human body as their subject."

The lower jaw has been removed from the head which is tilted back so as to display the upper palate of the mouth and the muscles of the neck and their attachments to the cervical vertebrae and the first ribs. The lower jaw is on the right (fig. 3) and above it is the tongue (fig. 2)

[Paris] : [Sieur Gautier], [1745 [-1746]]

1 print : mezzotint, printed in colours ; image 40 x 31.6 cm

Figure 8 demontrée par M. Duverney, peinte et gravée en couleur par J. Gautier

H.W. Singer, 'Der Vierfarbendruck in der Gefolgschaft Jakob Christoffel Le Blons mit Oeuvre-Verzeichnissen der Familie Gautier-Dagoty, J. Roberts, J. Ladmirals und C. Lasinios', Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, 1917, 10: 177-199, 301-314; 1918, 11: 52-57, no. 8

Michèle Hébert, Edmond Pognon, Yves Bruand, and Yves Sjöberg, Inventaire du fonds français, graveurs du XVIIIe siècle, Bibliothèque nationale, Département des estampes, tome X, Paris 1968, pp. 53-55, Jacques-Fabien Gautier d'Agoty no. 39 ('(32-51). Pl. pour : Myologie complète en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l'Essai et de la suite de l'Essai d'Anatomie, en tableaux imprimés. Ouvrage unique, utile et nécessaire aux étudiants et amateurs de cette science. — Paris, le Sieur Gautier, seul Graveur Privilégié du Roy, rue St-Honoré, au coin de la rue St-Nicaise; Quillau Père; Quillau Fils; Lamesle; 1746. … H. W. Singer, nos 1-20. … 39. Tête renversée en arrière, sans la mâchoire inférieure, disséquée. Au bord sup. : "Figure 8. Démontrée par [etc.]". H. 0m400 x L. 0m317.')

Florian Rodari, Anatomie de la couleur. L'invention de l'estampe en couleurs, exh. cat., Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1996, pp. 112-119

L. Choulant, History and bibliography of anatomic illustration, tr. and ed. by M. Frank, Chicago 1920, revd ed. 1945, repr. New York 1962, pp. 270-271

K. B. Roberts, and J. D. W. Tomlinson, The Fabric of the body. European traditions of anatomical illustrations, Oxford 1992, pp. 523-528

Wellcome Collection 33539i

This print was published in Gautier d'Agoty's Essai d'anatomie (Paris 1745), and then included in his Myologie complette published in Paris in the following year