L' Épitomé d’anatomie de Félix-Émile Taunay, 1837

Abstract

Félix-Émile Taunay, director of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro between 1834 and 1851 was the responsible for the organization of a teaching methodology, which was based on classical grounds and derived from the French academic model. In order to attain this objective, he organized in 1837 an Epitome of Anatomy based upon fundamental works for the study of drawings, namely: Charles Le Brun’s theory of expressions (1668), Francois Tortebat’s and Roger de Piles’s treatise on bones and muscles (1668), Gerard Audran’s treatise based upon figures of Antiquity, and the entry “proportions” from Aubin-Louis Millin’s Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts (1806); these ideas will be herein analised for the understanding of his teaching methodology and the reception of the classic tradition in Brazil