[Jan Stephan Van Calcar, a valuable and unrecognized collaborator of Vesalius]

Abstract

Numerous and legitimate homages have been paid to Andreas Vesalius, eminent personality of the medical Renaissance. At that time scientific anatomy was inseparable from artistic one. As soon as 1535, Vesalius then 21 years old taught in Padova and at the University of Venice, a town harbouring many artists. It has been suggested that he had obtained the collaboration of Titian himself, but this hypothesis has not been confirmed. In fact "Lives of the best painters, sculptors and architects" G. Vasari expresses his admiration for the prints drawn by Calcar: "the illustrations conceived by Vesalius for his Fabrica and drawn by the outstanding flemish painter Jan Stephan Calcar are of an excellent style". For Carel van Mander nicknamed the "Vasari of the ancient Netherlands", it is to Calcar we owe Vesalius' anatomical plates. The reasons which have led this Flemish born around 1510 in Kalkar, a small town of the Cleves dukedom, to settle in Venice are both general and personal. Pupil of Titian, Calcar was an excellent portrait-painter who assimilated so well his master's style that he was adopted by the Italians calling him Giovanni Calcar. This valuable collaborator of Vesalius and brilliant pupil of Titian went to Naples for unknown reasons and stayed there until his premature death around 1546.