GERMAN, PROBABLY LATE 17TH CENTURY

Although anatomical models of eyes are known to have existed from the 17th century onwards, the construction of the example offered here relates very closely to an engraving of a virtually identical, disassembled, model of an eye carved by Stephan Zick (1639-1715) in circa 1680 (Braunschweig, loc.cit.). Zick was from a dynasty of turned ivory carvers active from the late 16th to the 18th century in Nuremberg, one of the main centers of ivory production alongside Regensburg and Dresden. Such models, as well as carved skulls and human skeletons, were conceived as teaching tools and, in the case of the eye at least, were inspired by the drawings of Andrea Vesalius in 1543 and, most relevantly, Georg Bartisch who is credited with producing the first renaissance manuscript on ophthalmic disorders and eye surgery in 1583.