Why Jacob Christoph Le Blon and Jacques-Fabien Gautier thought the color-printing process was appropriate for anatomy is unclear. But when Gautier set out to commercialize color printing after Le Blon's death, he decided to exploit the market for books on anatomy and natural history. Over the next thirty years, Gautier would draw, engrave, and print in color a series of books which were as radically original and dramatic in their huge sizes and artistic compositions as they were original in their manner of production. Gautier's books contained some explanatory text which we didn't reproduce in this collection. For the medical and scientific value of those texts were poor and didn't bring anything of significance since the previous printing of books with black and white plates such as De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius (Basel, 1543 and 1555) and, at about the same time, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani (London, 1749) by Bernhard Siegfried Albinus.

The scientific explanations of Gautier d'Agoty's books were overwhelmed by the power of the images, and in turn, whatever science might have been shown in the images was overwhelmed by the drama of the color and the composition.

Why Gauthier d'Agoty introduced his readers to anatomy in a so strange manner, so casually, as if his skinless women were attempting to charm the observer regardless of an excruciating but seemingly absent pain anyone is obviously compelled to think about. Because this clear intention of Gauthier d'Agoty to introduce striking effect on the mind extended to repeated realistic close-ups on female and male genitalia, sometimes cut or tortured, sometimes awfully damaged by some venereal diseases whose view couldn't but be shocking to anyone was not an experienced physician. And in some of those last instances where a penis in erection is shown in presence of a vagina, one could easily consider that they rather belong to the realm of sadomasochist pornography than to educational anatomy. The obvious marked interest of Gautier d'Agoty for the matter of sex reaches its apex with two close-ups on the bizarre genital organs of hermaphrodites. All this at a time and in a place - the XVIIIth century in monarchic France - where printing a book featuring genitalia so crudely, and even not so realistic so far, was considered not only as an offense to Christian morality, but as a highly punishable crime.

The explanation for such an odd display we found in archives and notes by and on Gautier d'Agoty says that it expressed probably more a sly attempt to strike the minds of influential personalities who could help him financially to expand his printing activity, than a manner and a pretext to satisfy some all personal forms of sexual fantasies. As a consequence, unintended doubtless, if Gautier d'Agoty was not the inventor of color printing, as he wanted others to believe, he was certainly the first to create a particular artistic style which reappeared in painting in the early 1920s, which had to be named "surrealism" by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Later on, Spanish painter Salvador Dali often connected the genre with sex in a symbolic manner, and he is still thusly followed by many until our modern time.

(WARNING: some images in this book might be disturbing; we advise not to buy it for children under age 16).
About the Author: Jacques-Fabien Gautier, who would later add "d'Agoty" to his name, (1716-1785) was a French anatomist, painter and printmaker born in Marseille. He is sometimes wrongly credited with the invention of printing in full color.
In fact, he was the pupil of Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741), a German painter and engraver who is the inventor of a system of three, then four colors, printing using a RYBK (red, yellow, blue, and black) color model similar to the modern CMYK system (cyan [or blue], magenta [or red], yellow and black). He, and Gautier d'Agoty, used the mezzotint method to engrave three or four metal plates (one each per printing ink) to make prints with a wide range of colours. Le Blon's methods helped form the foundation for modern color printing.

Gautier d'Agoty gained his fame for his strange large anatomic plates, often sexually and ambiguously loaded, whose style makes him a forerunner of the surrealist movement more than a century earlier. Still today, some find disturbing his crude manner of representing human anatomy and his marked interest for publishing realistic close-up representations of genitalia, venereal diseases and hermaphrodite sex organs in full actual color.