This is a rare & superb full folio 'fine art print' after the incredible work by Bernard Seigfried Albinus published in 1758.
This image is perhaps the most striking of the set, & the lithographed reproduction is exceptional. I know of no other classic, limited-edition fine-art folios of this profound engraving. A very large & impressive piece.
Appears to be printed on beautiful laid paper, with the lower caption below the original engraved image with the title in English, translation from the Latin: THE GRAVID UTERUS.
The caption details the origin: 'Plate III From Uteri Mulieris Gravidae, 1758, One of a Series of CLassic Illustrated Folio Volumes by the Greatest Descriptive Anatomist of the Eighteenth Century, Bernard Siegfried Albinus'
It further notes in fine print, that it's reproduced 1.11 times actual sizefrom the original folio, First Edition 1981, Limited to 3000 impressions on Tarotext laid cover paper, by JEM-ART: Posters for the Arts & Sciences.
This is one of the most important & famous obstetric engravings ever created, beautifully reproduced, A fantastic piece.
Since I don't have a scanner that can handle a sheet this huge, I actually made 4 separate scans & did my best to knit them together into one image, not a bad job I think ;), but if you notice any inconsistencies, it's because each scan always seems to be a tiny bit different in tone.
I posess 2 copies of this piece, & will list them both here, but this listing is for one.
I actually have a set of the original antique folios ftom this work, which I'll be listing separately, including this image.
The Volumes:
Thus far I'm not finding readily available historical info on this amazing work. It's full title is: Tabulae VII. Uteri Mulieris Gravidae cum jam Parturiret Mortuae, published by Verbeek, 1748, large fol., 7 copperplates.
Much reference about Albinus concerns his other famous work of the full figure anatomy, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani. Leiden: Johan and Herman Verbeek, 1747, from which I also have several original plates I'll be listing.
The Artist & Engraver:
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (originally Weiss; 24 February 1697 – 9 September 1770) was a German-born Dutch anatomist. He served a professor of medicine at the University of Leiden like his father Bernhard Albinus (1653–1721). He also published a large-format artistic atlas of human anatomy, with engravings made by Jan Wandelaar.
Together with Hermann Boerhaave, he edited the works of the physicians Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey. Albinus is known for his Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani, an exquisitely illustrated volume, which was first published in Leiden in 1747, largely at his own expense. Albinus is thought to have spent 24000 florins for the work. The artist and engraver with whom Albinus did nearly all of his work was Jan Wandelaar (1690–1759). From 1746 until his death, Wandelaar lived in Albinus's house. In an attempt to increase the scientific accuracy of anatomical illustration, Albinus and Wandelaar devised a new technique of placing nets with square webbing at specified intervals between the artist and the anatomical specimen and copying the images using the grid patterns.
I'd always thought these Gravid Uterus plates were engraved by Wandelaar, but from some historical references, these plates may have been drawn & engraved by Albinus himself.
The Plates & Technique:
Line-engraving or Copperplate engraving is a highly exacting & labor-intensive process for intaglio printmaking. The original drawing is cut into the surface of a copper or steel plate with a hand-held sharp steel point or burin, with shading created by many fine cut lines, or hatching. Before printing takes place, the plate is heated, covered with ink. The warm ink seeps into the finest of depressions and fills the lines and textures of the drawing. The rest of the plate is cleaned off. The copper plate is now pressed with a printing press on to moistened paper which soaks up the ink from the depressions in the plate. The copperplate-engraving technique is very exacting, time-consuming and exhausting for the engraver, who needs a lot of strength for it.
Every part of these prints was made by hand: Hand drawn & engraved on Copper or steel which was hand-mined, smelted & rolled, printed onto handmade cotton rag paper, inked & colored with hand-ground pigments individually by hand, & they were usually hand sewn into handmade leather-bound books.
Condition:
Excellent condition, almost pristine, some possible faint artifacts from handling a sheet this huge.
Mostly these prints are very old & may have minor imperfections expected with age, such as some typical age-toning of the paper, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book & handled, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.
Text Page(s): This one comes without original text pages which were likely published in their own volumes. Included in the photos is a scan of a title page, which is for reference & not part of the listing.
Size: 30" x 19" approximately.
Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints can be combined into one package. Larger prints may need to be shipped in tube. eBay should auto-combine your items if you put all of your selections into your shopping cart & check out all together as one order. If you purchase them individually, eBay charges shipping on each, which I then will need to refund after. If you're assessed multiple shipping charges for one combined package, I will endeavor to refund any overage asap.
Thanks for Visiting!
Please note: The information I've included in this listing is based on my best research & observations as an enthusiast of these works, not a professional historian of antiquarian books & prints. I do like to offer some background information readily available to me but make no claims representations of total accuracy. Any corrections or further information you might offer would certainly appreciated! The scans in the images are my best efforts to accurately show the item. Antique prints & old paper are notoriously tricky to scan accurately. In my experience, scanners tend to be thrown off by the off-whites & gradations in age-toned paper. If the scanner produces a scan that's too dark or too brown, etc, I'll often try to reasonably color-correct to represent the print as accurately as possible. I'm not a professional in color-correcting images yet I try my best to show the print as close to the original as possible. I also find that different monitors show colors differently, & eBay's system can sometimes throw off the colors a bit in the uploaded JPEG images as they appear on their site. Thank you!