Queen of Bones
“Sacrum Anatomiae,” She who is Sacred Anatomy, rules with femur and skull as Her scepter and orb. She crowns the title page of Nathaniel Highmore's 1651 anatomy book, Corporis humani disquisitio (An Inquiry Into the Human Body.)
Over what does she preside?
The Queen gazes with equanimity over a flayed human skin, that mantle under which She conceals the mystery of life. Beneath skin is hidden the body’s operations. Like the cover of a book, skin both advertises and conceals content within. Unlike the cover of a book, opening skin destroys the content even as it is, briefly, revealed.
“Dedicated to William Harvey (1578-1657), N. Highmore's Corporis humani disquisitio* of 1651, was one of the first anatomy books to accept his theory of circulation of blood, an allegory of which is illustrated by the pump supplying a canal system that is visible through the arch of the engraved frontispiece.”