Credit: Royal Society
    Image number: RS.22020

    Dissection of an eye

    Date
    1613
    Creator
    Theodor Galle (1571 - 1633, Flemish) , Engraver
    After
    Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640, Flemish) , Draughtsman
    Object type
    Library reference
    RCN 24525
    Material
    Technique
    Subject
    Physics
       > Optics
    Description
    Illustration from the title page of the first book of Opticorum libri sex (Six Books of Optics) by Flemish mathematician and physicist François d'Aguilon (1567-1617). The vignette, engraved after an original drawing by Peter Paul Rubens shows five putti, male childlike angels, and a man dissecting the eyeball of a cyclops.

    The robed male figure is seen observing the dissection as one of the putti cuts into it with a knife. Another putto is seen inspecting the cavity on the cyclops’s head where the eye was removed from. A variety of dissection tools can be seen by the head towards the right of the image.

    François d'Aguilon (1567-1617), Flemish mathematician and physicist, was not a Fellow of the Royal Society.

    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline