The question of how to represent the inanimate as living has been and remains crucial to medical anatomical illustration. It is a conceptual issue that has had to be faced up to by authors of various periods and has called forth, from time to time, various visual solutions in such a way as to bring to light and to anticipate, also unconsciously, the moods and themes of modernity.

For this reason, the most recent studies of the iconology of the body in its relations to art and to science have concentrated on the analysis of the technical image, regarded not merely as an illustration or example but recognised in its autonomous role as a primary source in the production of knowledge and as a bearer of decisive contributions to theory construction and to showing such theories’ critical points. Moreover, in the case of the plates in anatomical atlases that were jointly conceived by medics and artists, the technical image turns out to be a device that is particularly apt to the reception of an often implicit set of presuppositions and to convey ancient ideas and superstitions about the body as well as nursing embryonic conceptions and styles of life, thus advancing visions and technical solutions able to represent them.