As a design professional and an artist I’ve always been fascinated with medical illustration, and these great paintings are really remarkable documents that transcend above the ordinary. They are really beautiful and grotesque, created in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician/artist Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825). The paintings were studies created from actual corpses which were actually the remains of recently beheaded criminals, and it is the grotesque expressions which really makes them stand out in this time period. There are two scrolls of 83 paintings currently hosted at the Keio University Library. Check out the rest of the images here (there is a link to page navigation in the bottom left corner of the page).

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