The muscles of the human body, third layer, seen from the back

This is one of the anatomical prints by Arnaud-Eloy Gautier d'Agoty (1741-1771), one of the sons of Jacques-Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1711-1785).

Jacques Fabien's claim to fame was his use of the unusual technique of colour mezzotint. The technique had been first used by his teacher Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741) who communicated it to his four pupils. After Le Blon's death, Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty applied for a privilege (similar to a patent) for the procedure, and, controversially, received it. The technique involved making four (originally three) copper plates for each print, one for the black parts, one for the yellow, one for the red and one for the blue. The green background, that is virtually Gautier d'Agoty's trademark, shows where both the yellow plate and the blue plate have been printed on to the sheet. In this print Arnaud-Eloy has taken a black and white anatomical engraving by a contemporary anatomist, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus of Leiden (1697-1770), and has copied it in the characteristic red and green livery of the Gautier d'Agoty family.

The figure is posed in the same way as a model in a life-class, in the hope that the anatomical prints would be of interest to art students as well as to other students of anatomy.