Study of the Fetus in the Womb (c. 1511)
Leonardo da Vinci
SPUC’s Dr Daniel Frampton encounters six compelling artworks spanning 900 years of art history, including film, and examines each work from an openly pro-life perspective in a unique cycle of short essays that aim to be educational and contemplative – revealing, too, the powerful role art can play in advocating for a true culture of life that speaks truth to power in a world that has lost its moral centre.
This week, Daniel reflects on Leonardo da Vinci’s “Study of the Fetus in the Womb”.
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“Fetus” is derived from the Latin word for “offspring”. In a sense, this word, today, appears cold and impersonal. Certainly, pro-abortion advocates prefer this term exactly because “baby” or “child”, which just seem so much more individual, are indeed much too human for them and their life-denying ethic.
We must always guard against this manipulation of language, of course; but while we do so, we should also take care not to cede the science to the other side. We may, I think, take a page out of the book of Leonardo da Vinci – or rather one of his remarkable notebooks.
Da Vinci’s meticulous “Study of the Fetus in the Womb” is very much matter of fact – but this is the source of its power as an image and pro-life assertion. There is nothing abstract about this “fetus”. It is, we can see for ourselves, a human being.
This study is one of two sketches made around 1511 by the artist, directly observing dissections in Italy, allowing him to accurately depict human anatomy, including the uterus.
Of course, when we study this image, we are looking at a dead baby inside the cadaver of its mother. There is an element of tragedy in this sketch, of course, and da Vinci’s keen eye and precise hand, as well as his detached notes, might appear to rob the body of its humanity.
But I differ from this view. These are the cold facts of the matter, for sure, but these facts are nevertheless miraculous, most of all in their detail.
My previous selections have empahsised the warmth of motherhood, and that is one essential truth that we may claim as “pro-life”. Here, in da Vinci’s notebook, however, there is an evident absence of sentimentality. The artist, taking up another essential truth, portrays his subject with the cold eye of the anatomist and the embryologist.
Da Vinci’s image is probably the first accurate depiction of a fetus in the womb, in its appropriate place, accompanied by accurate sketches of the vascular system of the cervix and vagina, as well as the uterine artery.
This artist, this genius, applied techniques common to Renaissance art to show an unborn baby in three dimensions, seen through the cross-section of its mother’s uterus. While at first glance this page in da Vinci’s sketchpad appears grounded in science, which it is, and even in architecture, his evident fascination with his subject underscores da Vinci’s wonder of nature, recognising its sheer complexities, constructions and will to life.
What da Vinci saw here, I think, was the everyday – but nonetheless marvelous – architecture of life that mankind underrates at its peril.
In 2022, we know all too well how abortion ideology assaults this architecture, both materially and conceptually. Unlike da Vinci and the anatomist, abortionists perform violence on two living bodies – the mother and her child – ironically denying the essential matter of fact of da Vinci’s image of the unborn baby, its being and its wonder.
Nevertheless, looking at the fetus, the facts of life are plain. They are on our side. Most vitally, they are on the side of the unborn child.
Read last week's article by Dr Daniel Frampton here.