ABSTRACT
Although cruder than that of the Fabrica, the series of musclemen and skeletons that appears in Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Commentaria, an annotated edition of Mundinus published in Bologna in 1521, and those that feature in the numerous editions of Carpi’s Isagogae breves, rst published in Bologna in 1522 (Lind, 1959) are important prototypes for their use of animated gures in landscape settings. Some of Berengario’s musclemen wield axes or drape ropes ending in nooses about them (Fig. 16.2), both references to the manner of death of the executed criminals who accounted for the majority of early subjects for dissection. Notably, Berengario’s muscle gures retain their facial features, even those gures that are meant to show the muscles of the entire body. e eyes, nose, and mouth all remain below a full head of hair. In this way, the gure keeps its ability of expression and thus its humanity, as well as its lifelikeness.
