Leonardo's Dissection of the Body

Leonardo was a student of alberti, who wrote an essential treatise on painting. Alberti states that a true art ist builds their human subjects from the bones, then the muscles, then the naked figure, and finally the clothes. And this gives a truly lifelike demeanor to the body and to the subject of your painting. Now what's especially impressive about the fact that leonardo did these kind of dissections is that this was before the time of a proper way to treat the bodies and preserve them. So they weren't exactly pleasant to be around.