First Vision, from Mirrors of the Microcosm

This trio (1944.461, 1944.462, and 1944.521) of engraved, etched, and letterpress-printed anatomical broadsheets by the Augsburg artist Lucas Kilian boast over a hundred superimposed organ flaps. The viewer could dissect its male and female corpses as an educational medical exercise or purely out of morbid curiosity. The first sheet, or Vision, boasts male and female flap figures after Dürer’s 1504 Adam and Eve engraving. The second and third Visions display larger-scale images of Adam and Eve respectively, each standing on a skull with its own flaps. The medical doctor Johann Remmelin, who designed these flap prints as a student, coyly denied responsibility for the 1613 edition until the single-sheet prints appeared to be selling. Then he blessed the reuse of his “unripe fruit” as book illustrations.Perhaps uniquely for flap prints of this era, eighteenth-century restrikes from the plates for the 1619 second state are known. These show how tightly Kilian organized the interior flaps for printing. The etched organ flaps were cut out and pasted on the backs of the main engraved images, which were cut open, forming yet more flaps. Each constructed impression has survived in a different arrangement and bears signs of viewer interaction. The series elicited strong reactions due to its heady mix of allegorical iconography and Vesalian anatomy, made ever more potent by the removable organs and naked flesh. Indeed, an unidentified brown substance was applied to Eve’s genital area under two sets of modesty flaps—an unusual gesture of censorship, or perhaps prayer for offspring.