麻豆约拍

The human body is the battleground where our most fundamental ideas about the way the world is come into sharp focus.

When we think and talk about the body, we are suddenly very aware of that pattern of thinking which frames concepts in opposition, divides the world up between dark and light, material and immaterial, technology and humanity, invisible and visible, mind and body, body and soul.

In this ten part series, academic and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts traces how human knowledge of anatomy has grown and changed over time, and how this changing understanding has in turn affected our understanding of who we are.

Episode 7: Leonardo - Drawing the body

Drawing and anatomy have always gone hand in hand. And perhaps the most beautiful anatomical drawings of them all are from the notebooks of the Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci. Professor Alice Roberts celebrates da Vinci's lifelong fascination with anatomy and the ground-breaking diagrams he made. His drawings were based on his first-hand experience of dissections. He claimed to have performed more than thirty by the time he died.

Presenter: Professor Alice Roberts
Actor: Jonathan Kydd

A Made in Manchester production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4