Leiden University Libraries Digital Collections

Anatomical Drawings

Circa 4,400 anatomical drawings dating from roughly 1700 to 2000

Frontal view of the human skeleton

Anatomical Drawings

Since the foundation of Leiden University in 1575, the study of medicine was central to its mission. Johannes Heurnius (1543-1601) was the first professor of medicine, or anatomy, as the chair was often called. Like most of his successors, Heurnius combined a scholarly career with an practice as a doctor. One of these successors was Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1607-1770), who aimed at publishing a new anatomical atlas, cooperating with the artist Jan Wandelaar (1692-1759). The atlas, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani, was published in 1747. The many drawings Wandelaar made in preparation of this project, are still kept at Leiden University Libraries. They are supplemented by drawings made or commissioned by later professors of anatomy, like Andres Bonn (1738-1817, professor in Amsterdam), Eduard Sandifort (1742-1814) and his son Gerard (1779-1848). In the twentieth century pathologists commissioned drawings of afflictions and diseases, a practice that continues until the present day.

The collection contains more than 4400 drawings. Often they were made in preparation of publications or, especially in the twentieth century, for educational purposes. The collection of anatomical drawings offers a unique view of three centuries of drawing the human body. Included, however, are drawings of animals and anthropological drawings. Many drawings of diseased bones or organs are connected to specimens that are kept at the Anatomical Museum of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). The drawings were transferred from the LUMC to Leiden University Libraries in several batches, starting in the beginning of the twentieth century. The final group was transferred one century later.