Science Art: Human Skull, Plate V by William Miller.

William Miller was an engraver and illustrator in the 1800s, known familiarly as “the Scotch Quaker.” He created wonderfully detailed plates of, well, nearly anything that required a technical illustration – lighthouses under construction, botanical specimens, tapeworms or, as here, parts of the human body. Many of the engravings in the marvelous Wikimedia Commons collection from whence this piece came were done “after” someone else. Evidently, a person would draw a picture of a flower or piece of algae under a microscope, then hand it to William to make it work for printing.

This haunting skull, though, is William Miller after W. Miller. It’s part of a series that includes these delicate glimpses inside the fragile white dome.

You can read more about Miller (and his favorite illustrators) over here, at Wikipedia.

Tags: anatomy