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Anatomie du gladiateur combattant, applicable aux beaux arts...

Paris, 1812. Two-layer copperplate engraving, color. National Library of Medicine.

Jean-Galbert Salvage
(1770-1813)
[anatomist; artist]

A military doctor of the Napoleonic era, Salvage based his drawings on dissections of soldiers "killed in duels, in their prime." For this study of the Borghese Gladiator, an ancient Greek statue, he arranged his cadavers in the same pose as the sculpture and meticulously worked out the skeletal and muscular anatomy. Anatomical studies of important classical sculptures constituted a genre within fine art.

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