Juan Valverde de Amusco

JUAN VALVERDE DE AMUSCO (Amusco, Palencia, c.1525 - Rome, c.1587).
"History of the composition of the human body".
Printer Salamanca Lafreri Rome, 1556.
Facsimile Ricardo J., Vicent Valencia, 1998.
Limited edition.
Copy 171/3000.
Measurements: 29 x 20 x 3.5 cm.

Juan Valverde de Amusco was a Spanish physician and anatomist. His most important work was the "History of the composition of the human body", an anatomical treatise whose first edition was published in Rome in 1556, in Spanish, at the expense of the editors Antonio de Salamanca and Antonio Lafreri with a dedication to his protector, the Spanish Cardinal Juan Alvarez de Toledo, Archbishop of Santiago and First General Inquisitor of Rome. It was one of the most widely read and published texts on anatomy in the Renaissance. Most of the 42 intaglio plates are improved copies of the De humani corporis fabrica of 1543 by Andrés Vesalius, something that Valverde himself recognizes in the dedication of the book ("it would seem invidious or malignant not to want to take advantage of it"), in spite of which Vesalius, annoyed by this fact, accused him of plagiarism and of never having done an anatomical dissection himself.