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The Turn of the Skull: Andreas Vesalius and the Early Modern Memento Mori

Context and contribution: This article appeared in a special issue of Art History on ‘The Erotics of Looking: Materiality, Solicitation and Netherlandish Visual Culture’ edited by Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson, which explored the material qualities of early Dutch art to reveal the ways in which new forms of visual imagery solicit a beholder's involvement. San Juan's article offers a critique of conventional approaches to the tradition of the memento mori through an unexpected site: Andreas Vesalius’ 1543 treatise on the human body, in which this tradition is addressed directly in the celebrated woodcut of a skeleton sadly contemplating a skull.

Research imperatives and process: San Juan argues that rather than rehearsing the familiar narrative of the memento mori, the image of a skeleton contemplating a skull, and Andreas Vesalius’ treatise as a whole, seek to counter prevailing conceptions of death. Challenging the tendency to regard any reference to death as moralistic, the article analyses the representational strategies used for the skull and the skeleton in Vesalius’ treatise and proposes a process of change played out throughout the course of the treatise itself. She argues that crucial reversals in the understanding of the relation of life and death that could not be openly articulated within the text could be articulated in the woodcut, thus proposing a reconsideration of the potential of the early modern anatomical image.