Dissection of the Trunk of a Seated Black Man
- Certificate of Authenticity
- Museum-grade giclée on natural-toned, acid free 250 gsm matte paper
- 11 x 14 inches including white border
- Title, species name, and plate number printed in situ
- Produced in limited runs through Archive of Arcane Air
- Please allow 3-5 business for processing
Original work → Joseph Maclise, c. 1852
Joseph Maclise (1815–1890) was a surgeon, anatomist, and illustrator whose Surgical Anatomy remains one of the most striking visual records of the nineteenth century. Published in 1851, his plates combine surgical precision with dramatic, almost sculptural staging of the male form. Figures stand in classical contrapposto, rendered with a cultivated aestheticism that blurs the line between medical instruction and artistic indulgence. Though largely forgotten today, Maclise’s work once shaped surgical practice and continues to resonate as a visual artifact of anatomy’s history. In their tension between clinical dissection and the beauty of the living body, these images also leave space for queer interpretation; where procedure and intimacy meet in the gaze.
Within the history of anatomical illustration, Black men were seldom represented outside the racialized objectifications of colonial ethnography. Their bodies were too often reduced to spectacle, presented as specimens rather than as subjects. Maclise’s plate stands apart. The figure is depicted with the same composure and dignity as his other sitters: seated, head turned, torso opened yet resisting grotesque display. Instead, he rests within the same visual continuum of human anatomy.
This restoration preserves Maclise’s care while re-contextualizing the work for the present. What remains is not only a medical diagram but a document of presence: anatomy as portrait, history as record, the body as both scientific study and human form.
