This is a perforated case lined with a translation of the correspondence between
Vesalius and Oporinus. Its whereabouts remain unknown. Due to a special dispensation by our lawyers the VFI is able to reproduce an extract from the autobiography of Michael Ostwald, a Regest-speaking young male man, the last known person to carry suitcase 19.
In early 1990 I was awarded a commission jointly by the Research Council of
Australia, the
Milanese Institute of Urban and Architectural Studies and the Florentine
Guild, Arte Dei
Medici e Degli Apotecari . The latter guild was originally formed in
Florence during the
Renaissance when architects, physicians and surgeons elected to form a
collective Guild to
test the 'articulation of joints' and the 'articulation of the constructed
world'. My
commission was to travel to Padua to design a series of monuments to mark
the 450th
anniversary of the publishing of the Renaissance anatomist Andreas
Vesalius' seminal 'De
Humani Corporis Fabrica'. This commission came about as a result of my
previous works
on Lequeu's Garden of Isis and Jean-Francois De Bastide's Little House of
Architectural
Seduction being well received.
It was while researching the commission in Padua, in the Museum of
Renaissance Anatomy,
that I requested translations of the original correspondence between
Vesalius and Johannes
Oporinus his publisher in Basel. The translations, and associated notes on
the positioning of
the magnificent woodcuts ran to some pages and thus I asked the Chief
curator of the
collection to provide me with some means to carry the notes. He replied
that he had the
perfect holder, provided fortuitously by a previous scholar who was
interested in the same
letter between Vesalius and Oporinus. With case in hand I hurried out of
the museum and
down towards the market square and my hotel cursing the much battered case
and the
inclement weather which followed in my footsteps.
It was only later in my hotel room that I stopped studying my notes and
plans and looked
closely at the case the curator had given me. Externally it was not at all
unusual, being merely
a battered and less than water-proof suitcase marked with a luggage label.
Its underside
looked as if a number of holes had been drilled through the fabric in a
tight cluster and glue
discoloured the fabric around the holes. The faded and damp label which was
attached to the
handle was beyond deciphering although it gave the appearance of once
recording some
travellers name and address.
However within the case I was surprised to discover that it had been lined
with typescript
copies of the very same letter from Vesalius and Oporinus which I was
studying. It should
be noted here that the letter is significant for without its detailed
instructions the 'Fabrica'
could never have been published. The letter also sets out how the
manuscript and the woodcut
illustrations were intended to travel from Padua to Basel - a passage of
some importance.
While the translation which lined the case was workman-like it was in very
poor condition;
its source also appeared to be an adaptation of the excellent translation
of the same letter
completed by J.B. de C.M. Saunders and C.D. O'Malley and used in a
previous study I had
undertaken.
The underside of the case itself had been perforated as if it had, at some
time, been attached to
some device (through the base). Meanwhile the lid of the case looked as if
it had been
peppered with gun shots. However as I looked more closely it became clear
that the
perforations were by no means random. Each section of the letter which
lined the suitcase
had been broken down into identical length pieces. Each of these texts had
been formally
ordered within squares and within each of these squares a series of holes
or cross-cuts broke
through the case rendering the text incomplete and the suitcase permeable.
I recorded three of
these instances in a series of sketches at the time.
The following day I approached the head Curator and questioned him
regarding the case. He
replied in earnest that it belonged to a man who had come to study the
engravings of Vesalius
some years previously and he had left it behind when he departed. I asked
if it had contained
anything? He replied that it had, but that the notes were water damaged and marked with
much crossing-out and so he had thrown them away. I returned the suitcase
to him a few
days later and soon became immersed in my commission.
It was almost a year later as my designs were being completed, and
preliminary work was
underway in Padua to obtain the site, that back in Australia I started
working with overlay
sections of the woodcuts from the 'Fabrica' as part of the exhibition
associated with the
opening. Thus it was with some delight that I chanced to overlay my copy of
the 22nd plate
of the muscles (from the second book of the Vesalius' 'De Humani Corporis
Fabrica') over
the top of my sketches of the letters which lined the inside of that
suitcase. The perforations in
one of the letters matched the configuration of the coding points (letters)
on the wood-cut. It
must be remembered that all of Vesalius' wood-cuts were marked with
intricate letters on the
flayed flash of the animate cadavers. I soon photocopied the two documents
to the same size
and noted that the cross-cuts through the text and the lid of the suitcase
perfectly matched the
writing on the bodies in the wood-cuts from the 'Fabrica'. I tried both
other images and
eventually found matches from the 28th and 29th plates as well. I faxed
Padua immediately
trying to have the suitcase sent out to me but the head curator could not
find it any longer; he
thought that he might have passed it on to some other scholar interested in
the famous letter
between Oporinus and Vesalius! Finally I traced the sets of cross-cuts onto
the plates to
confirm my suspicions and then overlaid the text, the
woodcut and the signs
on the bodies - all matched.
By now I had looked more closely at my sketches and my numerous scale
photocopies of
body parts. My copy of the 'Fabrica', which I regret to say I stole from a
book store in
Rome some months before, was also in a sorry state. The perforations in
the lid of the
suitcase I am sure had been made by the insertion of a small sharp
instrument (a scalpel
perhaps) twice at right angles to each other forming a rough cross. It
wasn't long before I
realised that I had, however briefly, been in possession of one of the
missing suitcases of
Tulse Luper; there could be no other explanation.
In the years that followed, as my commission was completed and the
exhibition was
mounted (not without difficulties) I have become more and more convinced
that the suitcase
was some sort of map. The reason for this assumption is that each of the
plates of the
muscles depicts not only a body denuded of skin but also a backdrop
accurately recording the
actual location where Vesalius conducted the dissection. Each section of
the letter from
Vesalius to Oporinus also records a series of places along the path between
Padua and Basel.
I wonder in my dreams whether or not that suitcase was made to be mounted
upon a tripod,
as if it had become some artful camera obscura; this would explain the
tight cluster of holes
in the base of the suitcase and the glue which surrounded them. And
perhaps if this were true
the suitcase, like a perspective tool, could be orientated according to
those directions
prescribed by the landscapes depicted at the base of the original Vesalius
woodcuts. Once the
orientation was discovered then the location could be divined from the
letter which passed
between Vesalius and Oporinus. I wonder if all of these stages could be
replicated what
would be seen by looking through the crosses which perforate the lid of
Luper's suitcase?
What path would the suitcase lead the viewer along.
Bibliography.
Saunders, J.B. de C.M. O'Malley, C. D. The Illustrations from the works of
Andreas
Vesalius of Brussels. Dover Books London. 1973.
Frascari, M. Monsters of Architecture; Anthropomorphism in Architectural
Theory.
Rowman & Littlefield. 1991.
Vidler, A. The Writing Of the Walls. Architectural Theory in the Late
Enlightenment.
Princeton Architectural Press. 1987.
Vidler, A. "Preface" in De Bastide, J. F. The Little House: An Architectural Seduction.
Princeton Architectural Press. 1996.
Ostwald, M. J. Moore, R. J. Disjecta Membra: The Architectural Fascination
With Violent
Death - A Theoretical Inquest. Archadia Press. 1996. 100pp
