Memento Mori

Memento Mori from Thomas Gemini's 'Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio, aere exarata' (London, 1st ed. 1545), being the 'secunda ossium tabula' with a skeleton leaning on a tomb examining a skull.

Engraving, 1545, without date and signature.

Gemini's book consisted of titleplate and 48 plates copied from those in the 1543 Basle edition of Vesalius (in which the woodcuts are traditionally ascribed to Jan van Calcar). It went through five editions between 1545 and 1559, with varying printers (for the letterpress) and dedicatees. It is not possible to determine which edition this impression was used in.

Good proof, printed on contemporary laid virgin paper with "hand with star" watermark, trimmed to copperplate or thin margins, paper creases and some oxidation, otherwise in fair condition. At lower right, old ink inscription: Solidior corporis pars est quam frquens usus agitat [The most solid part of our body is that activated by frequent use] a phrase from Seneca. Further down, again in ink, Vivitar ingenio coetera mortis erunt. It derives from the phrase "Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt" from the Elegy to Maecenas I in the Vergilian Appendix, traditionally attributed to the poet Virgil. The meaning is to live by works of ingenuity since everything else will be taken care of by death.

Thomas Gemini was an engraver, printer, mathematical and (probably) surgical instrument maker. Perhaps born near Liège, his family name was probably 'Lamprechts' or 'Lambert', 'Gemini' being an adopted surname. He is thought to have studied copper engraving and possibly instrument making in Louvain, where he may have been associated with Gerard Mercator and possibly with Vesalius, although there is no evidence for direct contact with either. He may have been associated later with Mercator through the intermediary of John Dee who is thought to have brought Mercator’s design for an astrological volvelle he published in 1551 to London following Dee's second trip to Louvain in that year. Gemini subsequently incorporated much of this design into three of his known instruments. He also introduced the italic script to London but Mercator had published a manual on that script in 1540 which Gemini may well have consulted. In London from 1540/42, Gemini published in 1545 an edition of Vesalius' 'Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio' which he dedicated to Henry VIII; subsequent editions in 1553 and 1559 were dedicated to Edward VI and Elizabeth I, respectively (her engraved portrait accompanies the latter). His copper engravings for this work, 'the first of any artistic significance to be published in England', were closely based on woodcuts illustrating Vesalius’ ‘De humani corporis fabrica’, published in Basel in 1543. Gemini acknowledged this debt, maintaining that he published the engravings for the use of [medical] students. Established as a printer in the Blackfriars by 1555, he continued to publish other books and issue engravings until about 1559. Gemini's will was proved in London in May, 1562.

Bibliografia

Hind 1952-64, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (I.48.3); K.B. Roberts and J.D.W. Tomlinson, 'The Fabric of the Body', Oxford, 1992, pp.146-47, cat. n. 29.