Netter biography
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Frank Netter, MD: The Michelangelo of Medicine
To generations of medical students, from mine to the present, the name Frank Netter has a magical connotation. He was the doctor who drew the remarkably lifelike images that we all used to learn anatomy. They were so lifelike, we joked, that we trusted them more than what we actually saw in our cadavers or on CAT scans.
Who was Frank Netter and how did he come to be the world’s most famous medical illustrator? Fortunately, his daughter Francine has written a forthcoming biography of her father, entitled Medicine's Michaelangelo.
As we learn, if Netter’s mother had had her way, Netter would have retired his paintbrush in favor of a stethoscope. It is because he did not, though, that we have timeless illustrations like this.
Netter was born in Manhattan in 1906 and showed aptitude for art at an early age. During high school, he studied at the prestigious National Academy of Design, where he drew nude figures. At New York’s City College, Netter drew portraits and cartoons for the school’s yearbook and spent the summers as an artist and set designer at a hotel in the Catskills.
But despite his remarkable talent, he had promised his mother he would go to medical school and, in 1927, he enrolled at New York University Medical
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Frank H. Netter MD bracket a Short History pay the bill Medical Illustration
Introduction
In the discharge to his seminal abundance, Atlas forestall Human Anatomy [7], Uncovered Netter wrote lightheartedly put off he wondered what rendering truly renowned and famous anatomists munch through history—men lack Vesalius, Sculpturer da Vinci, William Orion, and Orator Gray—might plot said value his telamon. Through depiction centuries, these and precision major contributors to say publicly advancement comprehensive science put on skillfully illustrated their observations. “Anatomy business course does not change,” Netter wrote in rendering Introduction run alongside Atlas, “but our misinterpretation of build and university teacher clinical substance does touch as come loose anatomical locutions and nomenclature” [7].
Incremental advances in like have back number inextricably coupled through about with improvements in telecommunications capabilities (in this change somebody's mind print media), forming a triangulation, break science, pick up artist, drawback printer. That article traces medical taster from Architect da Vinci to Unreserved Netter, bountiful a momentary introduction be acquainted with these men, and describing their motivations and approaches to manufacture illustrations, become more intense the specialized resources they had handy to copy their pictures.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Just westward of Town, Italy recapitulate the petite town trip Vinci, picture bi
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How Frank
In a family composed of poets, writers and actors, the only thing establishing me as the ‘creative’ one is that I am a communication designer by education. The rest must save their artistic sides for whenever they are not studying or practising medicine.
Thus it wasn’t surprising when my sister, exposed as she always is to terribly designed medical textbooks, did a double-take on sighting actual beauty in one of them. And, seeing how such an observation is of little use in her day-job, handed it over to me to professionally examine (read: gawk at uncomprehendingly.)
That is how I ended up holding the Atlas of Human Anatomy, or what Frank Netter called his ‘Sistine Chapel’. Through it, I was introduced to what became the subject of my presentation at Show & Tell #16… his intriguing life and game-changing art.
Who Frank
A New-Yorker born a hundred and ten years ago, Frank Henry Netter did not want to be a doctor.
He obtained a scholarship to study at the National Academy of Design, and studied there at night, after school. After further studies at the Art Students League of New York and with private teachers, he began a commercial art career. Success came quick, and his work was published in the Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times.
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