Thursday 10 August, 2pm
Leonardo da Vinci may be most famous today for his painting, but he was just as interested in what was going on beneath the surface. At the end of the fifteenth century he was collaborating with anatomist Marcantonio della Torre, dissecting thirty corpses and producing beautiful drawings of what he saw. This talk by Human Remains Conservator Cat Irving will look at the history of interactions between anatomists and artists, and the way that contributed to the development of our understanding of the human body.
Cat Irving has been the Human Remains Conservator for Surgeons’ Hall since 2015 and has been caring for anatomical and pathological museum collections for over twenty years. After a degree in Anatomical Science she began removing brains and sewing up bodies at the Edinburgh City Mortuary. Following training in the care of wet tissue collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of England she worked with the preparations of William Hunter at the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University. Cat is a licensed anatomist, and gives regular talks on anatomy and medical history, as well as writing the blog Wandering Bones. Recently she has carried out conservation work on the skeleton of serial killer William Burke prior to his display in National Museum of Scotland.
Anatomists and Artists: Understanding What Is Beneath our Skin