The arterial system of human foetus. Engraving, 1686, after Gérard de Lairesse, 1685.

[Amsterdam] : [J. ten Hoorn], [1686]

1 print : engraving ; image 14.1 x 8.1 cm

Lettering in brown ink at top right corner: "Bidl<oo>" Bears plate number: Tab. V; page number

Wellcome Collection 29523i

The fifth of fifty-one plates first published in Steven Blankaart's De nieuw hervormde anatomie ofte ontleding des menschen lichaams, Amsterdam 1686, with a Latin edition the following year, entitled Anatomia reformata. The plates are made up of uncredited reduced copies of previously published illustrations, usually several to a page. In the notes to this plate in James Drake's Anthropologia nova (London 1707, 2 vols), where the Blankaart plates were published in an appendix to the first volume, the figure is credited in a critical manner to Govard Bidloo: "This monstrous figure of the arteries of a humane foetus, is copy'd from Bidloo, but revers'd in this print by Blancard ..." It was originally published in Bidloo's Anatomia humani corporis, Amsterdam 1685, tab. 23, an engraving after a drawing by G. de Lairesse. William Cowper in his Anatomy of Humane Bodies, London 1698, illustrated with Bidloo's plates, also found this figure wanting and described it as "a Prodigy in Nature" and referred the reader to his own plate of the foetal arterial system which he included in the appendix (pl. 3, fig. 3). Cowper assisted his friend, James Drake, in the production of the Anthropologia nova, providing text and plates, and it is probable that he was responsible for the commentary on the Blankaart plates as well. In the 1687 edition of Blankaart's Anatomia reformata and in Drake's Anthropologia nova of 1707, this plate has two additional figures from Kerckring of the ramifications within the liver of the vena porta and the vena cava