The melancholy of anatomy [An article from: Endeavour]

This digital document is a journal article from Endeavour, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
In the middle of the 17th century, two founding fellows of the Royal Society - John Evelyn and William Petty - commissioned portraits of themselves with skulls. The paintings were commemorative, because Evelyn was celebrating his engagement and Petty had recently acquired an anatomical post at Oxford, but both sitters also intended their pictures to serve as reminders of mortality.