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

  • Gautier Dagoty, 1717-1785.
Date:
[1745 [-1746]]
Reference:
33339i
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About this work

Description

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 plates are after dissections prepared by J. F. 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 people, 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."

Publication/Creation

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

Physical description

1 print : mezzotint, printed in colours, with added notations in pen and ink

Lettering

Figure 1e. Démontrée par M. Duverney ; Peinte et gravée en couleur par J. Gautier. The names of the muscles, in French, have been added in pen and ink

References note

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. 1
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. 53-54, Jacques-Fabien Gautier d'Agoty no. 32 ('(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. … 32. Buste d'écorché de face, la tête tournée à dr. Au bord sup.: "Figure 1er. Démontrée par M. Duverney, Peint et gravé en couleurs par J. Gautier. H. 0m418 x L. 0m315.')
Florian Rodari, Anatomie de la couleur. L'invention de l'estampe en couleurs, exh. cat., Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1996, p. 113, no. 93
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 illustration, Oxford 1992, pp. 523-528

Reference

Wellcome Collection 33339i

Reproduction note

Another version by Gautier d'Agoty of this bust of the head and neck exists in a smaller format, titled: Tabula musculorum capitis. It has been associated by Rodari (1996, no. 91) with a list of twenty-one plates advertised in 1741. The larger scale print was published in Gautier d'Agoty's Essai d'anatomie (Paris 1745), and then included in his Myologie complette published in the following year

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