Detail of The Figure of the Child Turning Itself to the Birth, an engraving from James Cooke’s Mellificium Chirurgiae (1693), which bears a striking resemble to the birth figures pictured in works by Eucharius Rösslin and Jakob Rüff more than a century earlier.
Featured on PDR in the essay Picturing Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe
When the womb began to appear in printed images during the 16th century, it was understood through analogy: a garden, uroscopy flask, or microcosm of the universe. Rebecca Whiteley explores early modern birth figures, which picture the foetus *in utero*, and discovers an iconic form imbued with multiple kinds of knowledge: from midwifery know-how to alchemical secrets, astrological systems to new anatomical findings.
Also appearing in the essay…
The Figure of the Child Turning Itself to the Birth
Date
1693
From
Mellificium Chirurgiae
