Andreas Vesalius produced his great exploration of the human body when he was only twenty-eight years old. The most celebrated illustrations in the book are the full-page skeletons and ‘muscle-men’, which adopt the most striking poses. One skeleton is shown contemplating a skull. The words inscribed on the plinth are taken from a classical Roman text, an elegy in the Appendix Vergiliana: ‘Honouring the Muses and Apollo in luxurious gardens, he reclined babbling verse among the tuneful birds. Aonian writings will eclipse marble monuments: genius means life, all else will belong to death.’

B 1.16 Med, pp. 164–165