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Visual arts and medicine in early modern Europe and beyond

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This book establishes novel points of connection between European art and medicine in early modernity, opening up new perspectives on the material, social, and theoretical basis of each discipline.
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  • 10 February 2026
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This book opens up new perspectives on the relationship between art, medicine, and science in late-medieval and early modern Europe. Looking beyond the traditional nexus of art, anatomy, and optics, the volume sheds light on a broader array of connections between artists and physicians: collaborations between painters and doctors on colour charts, handwork skills common to sculptors and surgeons, the transmission of art theory through medical texts long before the emergence of art writing itself as an independent genre, and the kinship of medical diagnosis with early modes of connoisseurship. Reconfiguring the histories of art, medicine, and science, the book also traverses conventional boundaries between physical and mental health, religious and medical modes of healing, menial and exalted forms of knowledge and labour, as well as vernacular and scientific understandings of human difference, including gender, race, and neurodiversity.
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Price: £30.00
Pages: 328
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date: 10 February 2026
ISBN: 9781526182876
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

ART / History / Renaissance, History of art, ART / History / Baroque & Rococo, ART / Subjects & Themes / Human Figure, MEDICAL / History, History of medicine, History of science, Human figures depicted in art

REVIEWS Icon

Introduction: Ut pictura medicina? – Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, Romana Sammern

Source 1 Bernardino Ramazzini, De morbis artificum diatriba, 1700 – Jana Graul
1 Saintly systems of healing: images, devotion and cures – Catherine Lawless
2 Wax ex votos in late medieval England: bodies, health, and the problem of portraiture – Carly B. Boxer

Source 2 Stefan Falimirz’ O ziolach (1534): the first medical text published in Polish – Julia Czapla
3 The anatomy of whiteness in late medieval Italy – Robert Brennan
4 ‘I advocate the frequent viewing of […] green’: Ficino, green walls and early modern ‘chromotherapy’ – Katharine Stahlbuhk

Source 3 The Canon of Polykleitos in Galen, Ali ibn Ridwan, and their Florentine readers – Robert Brennan
5 The uroscopic colour palette: Dominicus de Ragusa, Gentile da Fabriano, and painterly knowledge of urine – Fabian Jonietz
6 Crafting surgical expertise in the medical manuals of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (1518-1523) – Ariella Minden

Source 4 Pier Antonio Fucini, Trattato della pittura, ca. 1605/21 – Fabian Jonietz
7 Slave or condottiere? Artists, labour and occupational health in early modern Italy – Frances M. Gage
8 Giulio Mancini and Sebastiano Vannini: medicine and connoisseurship in early Baroque Rome – Fabrizio Federici

Source 5 The drawings of Georgius Josephus Camel and their role for the chemical and medicalarts between Central Europe and South Asia, ca. 1685–1706 – Paolo Sanvito
9 1638 – Bones of contention – Katharina Sabernig

Source 6 Visual culture of Tibetan materia medica – Katharina Sabernig

Afterword – Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, Romana Sammern

Bibliography
Index of names and subjects