Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2022
This article explores the epistemic value of touch in Italian Renaissance anatomy. Using archival and printed postmortem records from canonization processes and anatomical writings, it shows that haptic expertise (Greek ἅπτομαι [haptomai]: to touch) entailed not only the acquisition of practical skills but also the ability to discern, experience, and fully describe organic substances. Looking at the practices, languages, and theories underpinning medical and holy anatomies, I propose that haptic epistemologies lay at the heart of the understanding of the body in the early modern period, a time largely recognized to have transformed people's understanding and experience of visuality in the sciences and the arts.
I thank Allen Grieco, Katharine Park, Cynthia Klestinec, and the Villa I Tatti community for discussions at the early stages of this research. I am grateful to Pierre Bonnet and his team for inviting me into a (very haptic) dissecting room; to Christophe Masson, Carl Havelange, Emma Spary, Jennifer Oliver, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, and the TORCH Network “Writing Technologies”; and to the two RQ reviewers. This work was funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS and the Research Units Traverses and Transitions (University of Liège).