This print is made from a large engraving, engraved on a sheet
of copper 72x52 cm, printed on to white paper, coloured by hand
with red paint, laid down with adhesive on to canvas, and then
varnished. The reason for this procedure was to enable the print to
be hung up on the wall of an educational institution as a teaching
aid.
The dissecting room of an anatomy school would be an obvious
place for such a print. It could be pinned to the wall with pins
through the corners of the sheet, or it could have rollers attached
at each end so that the print could be suspended from the wall by a
piece of string attached to the upper roller, or (less commonly) it
could be framed. Varnish was applied so that, if the print became
dirty or bloodstained, it could be cleaned by wiping with a damp
cloth.
Over time, the varnish has turned yellow and has flaked away
from the paper in places. Such evidence of decay makes the work
unattractive to print collectors, many of who prefer to own a print
in its original condition. In the Wellcome Library, however,
evidence of how a document has been used is as important as its
authorship, style, or visual attractiveness. The survival of this
time-stained impression helps us to reconstruct the experiences of
people in the past.
The figure was drawn from dissections in the Anatomy School
of the University of Oxford.