Dissecting Leonardo's Anatomy
 

The Head and Skull The Spine

The Head, Skull, and Spine On dissecting the skull: "If you should cute an onion through the middle, you could see and enumerate all the coats or skins which circularly clothe the center of this onion. Likewise if you should cut the human head through the middle, you would first cut the hair, then the scalp, the muscular flesh and the pericranium, then the cranium and, in the interior, the dura mater, the pia mater and the brain..." (qtd. in O'Malley 142)                                                                                                                               On the spine: "But this convergence of muscles in the spine keeps it upright, just as the ropes of the shop support its mast; and the same ropes bound to the mast also support in part the edges of the ships to which they are joined" (qtd. in MacCurdy 103).                       On the study of the vertebrae: "You should make these bones of the neck from three aspects united and from three separated: and so you will afterwards make them from two other aspects, namely seen from below and from above, and in this way you will give the true conception of their shapes, which neither ancient nor modern writers have ever been able to give without an infinitely tedious and confused prolixity of writing and of time." (qtd. in MacCurdy  97).