From Leonardo da Vinci to Bernardino Genga. Treatises for “curers of wounds” and “sculputers and painters”

Abstract

This essay deals with Leonardo da Vinci’s intention to create two anatomical treatises concerning the locomotor apparatus (but also covering the routing of veins and nerves) – one for sculptors and painters, for their artistic representations, and one to aid surgeons (whose activities were the care of wounds, phlebotomy and treatment of dislocations). Leonardo’s project was only achieved in the second half of the Seventeenth Century by the anatomist Bernardino Genga (1620-1690), to whom we owe a treatise on Surgical Anatomy (Anatomia chirurgica…, 1672) as well as the preparation of anatomical material for a treatise on Artistic Anatomy which was published by the Academy
of France in Rome under the direction of Charles Errard (Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno…, 1691). This essay describes the structure of these two treatises, relating them to Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical studies and drawings.