Monday 2 June 2014

This is SCIENCE, dammit!

Okay, my research leads me to some really random places.

This time it is foetal skeleton tableaux. The squeamish and anyone who might be triggered by this probably wants to stop reading right about now. If you like the macabre and truly bizarre - what, taxidermy? - you're going to love this.

Frederick Ruysch. Interesting chap. He was a scientist. He liked preserving things and actually, if you look at some of the pictures on this site, he was remarkably good at it. But he also made tableaux and memento mori he made with human foetal remains "and other human body parts". think why I love this is that it comes from that time when Western science taking its first independent steps and defining itself as a separate discipline from alchemy, theology, philosophy and, well, art. These pictures are beautiful and disturbing in equal measure and the methods of their construction are... yeah.

Anyway, go and check out this article about the man himself, with its plentiful illustrations, and this photo of an actual foetal tableaux, to which my first response was... this isn't real, right?

Have a macabrely wonderful day!

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