The finest anatomical work of the French Renaissance, with exotic images unique in the history of anatomical art.  Charles Estienne, son of Henri Estienne, the founder of the French dynasty of scholar-printers, studied medicine in Paris along with his classmate Andreas Vesalius.  His magnificent woodcuts work attracted much critical attention due to their wide variation in imagistic quality, the frankly erotic poses, the oddly disturbing postures of the figures and the insertion and uncertain origin of separately cut pieces for the dissected portions of the anatomy.  Had the publication of De Dissectione not been delayed by a lawsuit but instead appeared prior to 1543 as planned it would have eclipsed some of the innovation of Vesalius’s Fabricia on account of its many firsts in the scope of anatomical illustration. Morton 378