An epitome of a course of lectures delivered at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Release date is 2026-01-20

Tim Lindell, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

"Duval's artistic anatomy" by Mathias Duval is an instructional manual on artistic anatomy written in the late 19th century. It teaches artists to understand and depict the human form by explaining the skeleton, joints, muscles, proportions, movement, and facial expression in clear, practical terms. Emphasizing observation and hands-on study of bones, casts, and the living model, it proceeds from the skeleton to myology and then to expression, linking anatomy directly to surface forms and artistic needs. Historical context and methodological guidance frame a systematic, workshop-ready course.

The opening of the work lays out its aims, audience, and method: to give trained art students a scientific grasp of forms and movements by starting from the skeleton, correlating deep structures with surface appearances, and supplementing anatomy with functional insight. A revised preface urges direct handling of bones and live-model study, while the author’s preface critiques plate-copying, defends an integrated text-and-figure approach, and notes brief anthropological topics to aid head-form analysis. Early chapters survey how art and anatomy advanced together—from Egyptian and Greek observation through Renaissance dissection to modern needs—arguing why today’s artist must know anatomy. The plan of study is defined (proportions, forms, attitudes, movements, expression), followed by concise fundamentals: anatomical nomenclature, bone types, cartilage, and the vertebral column’s structure, curves, ligaments, and surface landmarks. It then describes the thorax (sternum, ribs, chest shape and measures) and the shoulder girdle (clavicle, scapula, proximal humerus), concluding with the shoulder joint’s mechanics and how scapular and clavicular motion amplifies arm elevation and alters visible form. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1905