By Allison Hill-Edgar
For those of us who enjoy immersing ourselves in libraries and special collections, especially those that hold medical treasures such as the National Library of Medicine, there is perhaps no greater thrill than finding an unexpected inclusion in a published work. Finding two prints of intersex individuals inserted in the back of a 1763–1764 atlas of female reproductive anatomy was certainly one such thrill. This particular juxtaposition illuminated the complexity of medical representation and the longstanding struggle between defining an idealized norm and recognizing the reality of human diversity.
As a 2020 DeBakey Fellow, I had the opportunity to pursue my research on the visual history of female anatomy at the National Library of Medicine in the few months before the world shut down. Reviewing several 18th century obstetrical atlases, in particular those by William Hunter, William Smellie, and Charles Jenty, I came across a volume of Jenty’s Demonstration de la matrice d’une femme grosse et de son enfant a terme (Demonstrations of a pregnant uterus of a woman at her full time) from 1763–1764 that had two additional images bound in the back. Not only were these two prints not a part of Jenty’s original work, but also they were quite different in content, medium, and style from his atlas. Entitled “Garçon hermaphrodite vû en 1755, et dessiné d’après nature,” and “Fille hermaphrodite vûe en 1751, dessiné d’après nature,”the works are unsigned engravings of two intersex individuals.
I found myself asking who made these images and why? Why were they bound in this particular volume? As someone who studies gender representations in medical illustrations, I felt that the relationship between the two sets of images was not entirely random. In fact, their juxtaposition informed and expanded the scope of my own research project, Dissecting Gender: Reframing Anatomical History Through the Female Body to include an investigation of the association between non-binary bodies and the binary construct of the female body.
Charles Nicholas Jenty’s Demonstrations was first published in England in 1758 and contained six hand colored mezzotint prints copied from the drawings of the artist Jan van Rymsdyk. The prints visually dissect a truncated, pregnant female body in vivid detail, revealing successive interior layers of the abdomen, uterus, fetus, empty uterus with placenta and vagina, and a free-floating womb. The mezzotint prints are much darker and heavier than the original Rymsdyk drawings, but according to Jenty, mezzotints “may want the smartness of engraving, but the softness that they possess may approach nearer to the imitation of nature” (Human Anatomy: a visual history from the Renaissance to the digital). During the mid-18th century, there was a significant aesthetic shift in anatomic representation towards objectivity and naturalism, and the “stripping away of artistic niceties, such as imaginative flair and narrative style” (Replicating Venus: Art, Anatomy, Wax Models, and Automata). This clinical, focused, and sometimes brutal approach often resulted in a disembodiment and dehumanization of the subject, presenting the pregnant woman as a series of dismembered reproductive parts, described by Andrea Henderson as “butcher shop meat.”
In contrast to Jenty’s mezzotint prints, the two engravings of “hermaphrodites” included in the back are overflowing with such “artistic niceties…, imaginative flair and narrative style.” Each shows a full figure, perched on a bed with flowing sheets, gilt details, and accoutrements such as draped clothes and mirrors. Although the figures are nameless, they are represented as actual individuals with expressions, gestures, personalities, and specific physical features. The overall impression of the prints is celebratory, erotic, and very much in keeping with the fashionable aesthetic of the time exemplified by the French painter Francois Boucher (1703–1770).
The figures are labeled as “hermaphrodites” because they each exhibit elements of both male and female external genitalia, though in different configurations. The term hermaphrodite originates from the Greek myth of Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who was physically joined in one body with a nymph. At the bottom of the “garçon” print, there is a handwritten note in Greek explaining the term: from Hermes and Aphrodite.
Whereas in contemporary biology, the term hermaphrodite is used to describe animals or plants that have both male and female reproductive organs, structures, or tissues, before the 20th century, it was used more broadly to describe anyone whose sex was ambiguous or in doubt. From the mid-20th century onwards, the term intersex has been used to describe anyone whose body does not fit binary conceptions of male or female.
Despite being labeled “hermaphrodites,” which implies being both male and female, the figures are gendered by binary titles, “fille” and “garçon,” as well as elements of their features and surroundings. The “fille” has breasts and an appearance typically used to depict women of the time, such as narrow shoulders, wide hips, voluptuous thighs and abdomen, elegant limbs, and delicate facial features. Her hairstyle and scant garments are similarly stereotypically female. The “garçon” has wider shoulders, narrower hips, and a muscular physique. He is shown with a shorter haircut and cross-body strap, often seen in artistic representations of male hunters, archers, and shepherds. He is shown gazing into a mirror, however, which is a twist on a traditional binary gender attribute. Looking into a mirror historically has been an artistic convention generally associated with female subjects. Furthermore, a popular, though undocumented, theory claims that the hand mirror is an attribute of Venus, the female goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to that theory, the symbol for female, “♁” is a stylized version of her hand mirror. William Stearn explains in “The Origin of the Male and Female Symbols of Biology,” that this symbol was originally used in ancient Greece to reference a planet and its corresponding deity (Venus). In the 18th century, the botanist Carl Linnaeus began using this symbol to reference the female gender of plants, thus establishing “♁” as female in science. These images explore and bring to light the natural non-binary spectrum of both sexual anatomy and gender.
But the questions remain, why were these images bound together in this particular volume and was there a meaningful association in the juxtaposition? One explanation for the linkage is that both sets of images would have been intended for a mid-18th century scientific audience interested in reproductive anatomy. Printed only a decade apart in France, their divergent aesthetic qualities embody the shift in scientific philosophy and medical representation that took place during the Enlightenment. The intersex images reflect the pre-Enlightenment approach to atypical or unique bodies described by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park in their book, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. In this work, the authors explore the complex history of physical anomalies, which in different historical periods might have been called wonders, monsters, prodigies, or marvels, and included references to hermaphrodites, giants, dwarfs, conjoined twins, and excessively hairy women and children. These labels generally have been replaced by more medically accurate and less derogatory and stigmatizing descriptors. Whether they elicited pleasure, horror, or a combination of both, such individuals were notable subjects of European Courts, universities, academies, and Wunderkammern. Intersex bodies were of particular interest to the medical community who wanted to better understand and document the full spectrum of human reproductive anatomy. From the 16th century onward, medical treatises catalogued case studies, “in an attempt to order [them] as an understandable, if not natural, phenomen[a]” (Exceptional bodies in early modern culture: concepts of monstrosity before the advent of the normal). Interest in intersex bodies intensified into the early 18th century and dissections were regularly reported in scholarly journals. The “fille” and “garçon” engravings are such visual case studies and the accompanying text that documents the date when they were seen and that they were drawn from life is a testament to their authenticity and accuracy. They are examples of the variation inherent in human anatomy in a world in which, to quote Daston and Park, “nature had room for exceptions.” The Jenty images reveal the philosophical and aesthetic shift towards empiricism through their focused surgical narrative of the “standard” female uterus. In these examples, visual objectivity, verisimilitude, and naturalism provide their own verification.
Thus, the two sets of images were likely considered related investigations of sex, reproduction, and gender and linked as such. Whereas the Jenty images document and attempt to demystify the site of human development, the added engravings display the remarkable spectrum of sexual presentation. Furthermore, this juxtaposition highlights the shifting mindset and aesthetic in anatomical representation at this critical juncture in medical history.
Allison Hill-Edgar, MD, MFA, is an Artist and Independent Scholar and a Lecturer at the New York Academy of Art, NY, NY, Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY, and the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY and a 2020 NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellow in the History of Medicine.