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HUNDT, Magnus, the elder (1449-1519). Antropologium de hominis dignitate, natura, et proprietatibus de elementis. Leipzig: Wolfgang Stoeckel, 1501.
4o (210 x 155 mm). Collation: A-C6 D4 E-L6 M4 N-V6 2A4. 120 leaves, unfoliated. Gothic type, shoulder notes. 4 pp. errata at end. 4-line initial spaces, a few with guide letters. 5 full-page woodcuts (including one repeat), 14 small woodcuts of anatomical details, printer's woodcut device on V6v. (A few small wormholes through text of first 50 leaves, some minor fraying to edges at front and back, marginal dampstaining to title-leaf and a few other leaves.) Modern calf tooled in blind to a geometrical design, by Ivor Robinson (small scratches to upper cover). Provenance: annotated by a contemporary owner (a few marginalia cropped); inserted sheet of comments on the book, signed and dated R.C.H.[?], April 14, 1887; Haskell F. Norman (bookplate; his sale part I, Christie's New York, 18 March 1998, lot 116).
FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS WITH ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. Hundt's Antropologia is one of the three or four earliest printed books to include anatomical illustrations. It contains the most complete representation of all the viscera published up to that time. The five full-page woodcuts consist of two identical representations of the human head, an entire body, a hand with chiromantic markings and the internal organs of the thorax. The smaller cuts distributed throughout the text include plates of the stomach, intestines, eye and cranium. Even though by this time dissection had been practiced in Europe for about two hundred years, these illustrations, by an unknown artist, are schematic devices rather than drawings done at a dissection. They do not appear to have been intended to correspond to anatomical reality. For example a woodcut of the body includes the names of all the external parts but makes no attempt to equate the anatomical terms with the parts they describe. Woodcuts like these are more like a visual way of listing the main organs, such as a table in a modern book might indicate relationships.
Like most of his contemporaries, Hundt believed in the influence of the stars on the human body, and incorporated remarks on chiromancy into his text. He also subscribed to the Galenic notion of the seven-celled uterus. Hundt's Antropologia provides a clear picture of late fifteenth-century anatomical concepts prior to the work of Berengario da Carpi. VERY RARE. BM/STC German p. 423; Clark & Dewhurst, p. 26; Choulant-Frank, pp. 125-126; Garrison-Morton 363.3; Herrlinger, pp. 62-64; NLM/Durling 2507; Norman 1115; Roberts & Tomlinson p. 30; Sappol, Dream Anatomy, p.85; Stillwell Science 664; Waller 4991.
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FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS WITH ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. Hundt's Antropologia is one of the three or four earliest printed books to include anatomical illustrations. It contains the most complete representation of all the viscera published up to that time. The five full-page woodcuts consist of two identical representations of the human head, an entire body, a hand with chiromantic markings and the internal organs of the thorax. The smaller cuts distributed throughout the text include plates of the stomach, intestines, eye and cranium. Even though by this time dissection had been practiced in Europe for about two hundred years, these illustrations, by an unknown artist, are schematic devices rather than drawings done at a dissection. They do not appear to have been intended to correspond to anatomical reality. For example a woodcut of the body includes the names of all the external parts but makes no attempt to equate the anatomical terms with the parts they describe. Woodcuts like these are more like a visual way of listing the main organs, such as a table in a modern book might indicate relationships.
Like most of his contemporaries, Hundt believed in the influence of the stars on the human body, and incorporated remarks on chiromancy into his text. He also subscribed to the Galenic notion of the seven-celled uterus. Hundt's Antropologia provides a clear picture of late fifteenth-century anatomical concepts prior to the work of Berengario da Carpi. VERY RARE. BM/STC German p. 423; Clark & Dewhurst, p. 26; Choulant-Frank, pp. 125-126; Garrison-Morton 363.3; Herrlinger, pp. 62-64; NLM/Durling 2507; Norman 1115; Roberts & Tomlinson p. 30; Sappol, Dream Anatomy, p.85; Stillwell Science 664; Waller 4991.