Titlepage of Govert Bidloo's "Ontleding Des Menschelyken Lichaams"

Govert Bidloo's most famous work was his monumental Anatomia humani corporis published in Amsterdam in 1685, containing 107 copperplate engravings. Like so many large and expensive anatomical atlases of the time, the work was not a financial success, and in 1690 he published a Dutch translation entitled Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams, using the same plates. When this edition did not sell well either, Bidloo's publisher sold 300 of the extra printed plates to William Cowper, a noted English anatomist. Cowper published the plates with his own, English language text in Oxford in 1698 under the title Anatomy of the Humane Bodies without mentioning Bidloo or the artists of the original plates.

Titlepage of Govert Bidloo's Ontleding Des Menschelyken Lichaams, Amsterdam 1690; source: US National Library of Medicine; http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/Images/1200_pixels/bidloo_title_02.jpg.