The Museum of Medicine has an important collection of anatomical drawings collected over more than three decades, between 1905 and 1938, by Henrique de Vilhena, professor of artistic anatomy at the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon and of the Institute of Anatomy, Faculty ofMedicine, University of Lisbon. During this period Vilhena was the responsible for the teaching chair of artistic anatomy at the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Among his students we can find some future famous artists like Guilherme de Santa Rita, Calvet de Magalhães, Dórdio Gomes, Ayres de Carvalho, Carlos Bonvalot, Helena de Bourbon e Menezes, Frederico George, Jorge Valadas, Norberto Correia, Estrela Faria, José Tagarro, Maria Keil. Vieira da Silva was also, as a personal option, student of Vilhena in 1928/1929, before going to Paris.
The exhibition "Cabinet of Anatomy - Arpad, Vieira and anatomical drawings of the Museum of Medicine" crosses a group of anatomical drawings made in the Institute of Anatomy by Vieira da Silva, with a group of drawings of the human nude body by Arpad Szenes, both from the collection of Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva Foundation, and with drawings from the collection of the Museum of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon.
Combining objectivity and subjectivity, interiority and exteriority, simplicity and complexity, this exhibition connects the art of image with which visually organized the «human body fabric» (title of the Vesalius's famous teathrise of anatomy, which inaugurated, combining art and science, the visual culture of medicine), with the image of art that indelibly marked the XXth century imagetic and artistic culture.
This book contains opening texts by Marina Bairrão Redhead, Director of the Foundation Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva, and José Fernandes and Fernandes, Director of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, an essay by Manuel Valente Alves, curator of the exhibition, reproductions of many of the exhibited works and a complete catalogue.