"There’s a fine line between the horrible and the sublime, and Joanna Ebenstein’s Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy walks it.”— The New York Times Book Review

"If Morticia Adams had a coffee table book, this would probably be it. This is not a book to read, so much as to drink in..."
—The C Word, The Conservator’s Podcast

"A lovingly curated and beautifully printed collection that belongs on every morbid enthusiast's bookshelf.” —Caitlin Doughty, mortician, author, and founder of The Order of the Good Death

"Joanna Ebenstein is one of our very best spelunkers into the world of the oddball and the offbeat. She is a masterful curator of things beautifully disgusting and morbidly fascinating. A true resurrectionist, she excels at dredging up from our collective unconscious items of uncanny beauty and terrifying wonder." — Colin Dickey, author of Ghostland and The Unidentified

This stunning new book, by Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein, with the assistance of medical editor Marie Dauenheimer MA, CMI, FAMI and published by Laurence King, explores the intersections of art and anatomy in nearly three hundred incredible images spanning seven centuries of anatomical artworks.

For centuries, humankind has sought to know itself through an understanding of the body, in sickness and in health, inside and out. This fascination left in its wake a rich body of artworks that demonstrate not only the facts of the human body, but also the ways in which our ideas about the body and its proper representation have changed over time.

At times both beautiful and repulsive, illustrated anatomy continues to hold our interest today, and is frequently referenced in popular culture. Anatomica brings together some of the most striking, fascinating and bizarre anatomical artworks from the 14th through to the 20th century, drawn from collections such as The Wellcome Collection and the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, The New York Academy of Medicine historical collections, and the Duke University History of Medicine Collection, exploring the art of human anatomy in one beautiful volume.

Image Sources (all drawn from the book, top to bottom):

1. A colored lithograph showing the opened chest of a man, with arteries indicated in red. Drawn by Jakob Wilhelm Roux, it comes from Tabulae arteriarum corporis humani, (Illustrations of the Arteries in the Human Body), 1822, by the German doctor Friedrich Tiedemann.

2. A phrenology chart by self-proclaimed Dr Bushea, after O.S. Fowler, from around 1845.

3. Colour mezzotint by Jacques-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty. Fondly referred to as ‘The Flayed Angel,’ it was published in his Essai d’anatomie en tableaux imprimés … (Illustrated Essay on Anatomy), 1746.

4. A lithograph showing a cross-section of the human brain, by Nicolas-Henri Jacob, and appeared in Jean-Baptiste Marc Bourgery’s eight-volume Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la médecine opératoire … avec planches lithographiées d’après nature par N-H Jacob (A Complete Treatise to Human Anatomy including Operative Medicine ... with lithographic plates drawn from nature by N-H Jacob) , 1831–54.

5. 1804 Water color engraving by George Kirtland, depicting an anterior view of a dissection of the arm.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, and the objective and subjective.

Nearly 300 images, 272 pages, 8.4 x 1.1 x 10.6 inches, 3.1 pounds
Prints: Limited edition archival prints, ready to frame, 8 x 10”
Totebag: Hand screened by our maker in Brooklyn

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