[2] Frank Henry Netter was born in Manhattan at 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, and grew up wanting to be an artist.

In 1936, the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company commissioned a small work from him, a fold-up illustration of a heart to promote the sale of digitalis.

These were small magazine-like brochures that typically featured an extensive article on a medical condition, commonly with about a dozen of Netter's illustrations.

[4] In 1989, Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy was published, assembled from his previous paintings and correlated by updated diagrams.

CIBA's Medical Education Department (East Orange, NJ) filtered the paintings for printing, in an effort that The Big Green Books "might appear more 'even' over time.

The vast bulk of Netter's illustrations were produced for and owned by CIBA Pharmaceutical Company and its successor, CIBA-Geigy, which has since merged with Sandoz Laboratories to become Novartis.

He has advanced our understanding of anatomy more than any other medical illustrator since the 16th century, when Vesalius introduced drawings based on cadaveric dissections.