Emperor. The more than 250 illustrations are of great artistic merit and are generally attributed by modern scholars to the "studio of Titian" rather than Johannes Stephanus of Calcar, who provided drawings for Vesalius' earlier tracts. The woodcuts were greatly superior to the illustrations in anatomical atlases of the day, which were never made by anatomy professors themselves. The woodcut blocks were transported to Basel, Switzerland, as Vesalius wished that the work be published by one of the foremost printers of the time, Johannes Oporinus. Vesalius' written directions to Oporinus (the iter) were so valuable the printer decided to include them. The illustrations were engraved on wooden blocks, which allowed for very fine detail. 1555 edition A second edition was published in 1555. Annotations in a copy of that edition donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, have been identified as Vesalius's own, showing that he was contemplating a third edition, never achieved. Reception The success of Fabrica recouped the work's considerable expense, and brought Vesalius European fame, partly through cheap unauthorized copies. He was appointed physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; Vesalius presented him with the first published copy (bound in silk of imperial purple, with specially hand-painted illustrations not found in any other copy). To accompany the Fabrica, Vesalius published a condensed and less expensive Epitome: at the time of publication in 1543, it cost 10 batzen. As a result, the Epitome became more widely seen than the Fabrica; it contained eight anatomical engravings that condensed visual material from the Fabrica, one illustration of the human skeleton taken directly from the Fabrica, and two new woodcut plates. Human remains During the 16th century, the dissection of human bodies was highly prohibited by the Church. Therefore, in order to combat this opposition, Vesalius had to secretly take the bodies of executed criminals, a process which he explains in De Humani Corporis Fabrica. This process of stealing the dead bodies of criminals was a key way for anatomists and artists to study the human body. For example in 1828 the case of Burke and Hare, whereby the bodies were delivered to anatomists for dissection, were murdered specifically for financial gain. Surviving copies More than 700 copies survive from the 1543 and 1555 editions. Of those, by 2018 some 29 copies were in London, 20 in Paris, 14 in Boston, 13 in New York, 12