The Anatomical Venus
The Anatomical Venus

Author: Morbid Anatomy Museum

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 2016-05-16

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0500773262

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Beneath the original Venetian glass and rosewood case at La Specola in Florence lies Clemente Susini's Anatomical Venus (c. 1790), a perfect object whose luxuriously bizarre existence challenges belief. It - or, better, she - was conceived of as a means to teach human anatomy without need for constant dissection, which was messy, ethically fraught and subject to quick decay. This life-sized wax woman is adorned with glass eyes and human hair and can be dismembered into dozens of parts revealing, at the final remove, a beatific foetus curled in her womb. Sister models soon appeared throughout Europe, where they not only instructed the specialist students, but also delighted the general public. Deftly crafted dissectable female wax models and slashed beauties of the world's anatomy museums and fairgrounds of the 18th and 19th centuries take centre stage in this disquieting volume. Since their creation in late 18th-century Florence, these wax women have seduced, intrigued and amazed. Today, they also confound, troubling the edges of our neat categorical divides: life and death, science and art, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, spectacle and education, kitsch and art. Incisive commentary and captivating imagery reveal the evolution of these enigmatic sculptures from wax effigy to fetish figure and the embodiment of the uncanny.

Model Experts
Model Experts

Author: Anna Maerker

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2011-05-15

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780719082054

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The museum 'La Specola' in Florence hosts a celebrated collection of eighteenth-century anatomical models in wax – lifelike body parts and bodies in vivid poses, reminiscent of famous works of art and anatomical illustration. Based on a detailed study of rich archival sources, Model Experts explores practices of model production and display, and reveals the often invisible labours of the co-operating artisans, anatomists, and administrators. The book shows that the models were central to a remarkable political experiment: 'La Specola' opened in 1775 as the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History, one of the first public science museums in Europe. As a venue for public enlightenment, the museum displayed model anatomies to create the model citizen. The study also moves beyond the borders of Tuscany, following a set of Florentine waxes to Vienna to explore the diverse reactions of medical professionals and general audiences as the models travelled in enlightened Europe. Focusing on the models' role for articulations of expertise in state service, the study uncovers the tensions and controversies behind the artificial anatomies' serene surfaces to highlight the fragility of expert authority, and the mutual constitution of notions of expertise, the public, and the state around 1800. The book will be of interest to historians of medicine, science, art, and enlightenment, to scholars in museum studies and in science & technology studies interested in the historical emergence of expertise, public engagement with science, and the relationship between science and the state.

The Anatomical Venus
The Anatomical Venus

Author: Joanna Ebenstein

Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers (DAP)

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781938922916

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At head of title: Morbid Anatomy Museum.

Ephemeral Bodies
Ephemeral Bodies

Author: Julius Ritter von Schlosser

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780892368778

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The material history of wax is a history of disappearance--wax melts, liquefies, evaporates, and undergoes innumerable mutations. Wax is tactile, ambiguous, and mesmerizing, confounding viewers and scholars alike. It can approximate flesh with astonishing realism and has been used to create uncanny human simulacra since ancient times--from phallic amulets offered to heal distressing conditions and life-size votive images crammed inside candlelit churches by the faithful, to exquisitely detailed anatomical specimens used for training doctors and Medardo Rosso's "melting" portraits. The critical history of wax, however, is fraught with gaps and controversies. After Giorgio Vasari, the subject of wax sculpture was abandoned by art historians; in the twentieth century it once again sparked intellectual interest, only soon to vanish. The authors of the eight essays in Ephemeral Bodies--including the first English translation of Julius von Schlosser's seminal "History of Portraiture in Wax" (1910-11)--break new ground as they explore wax reproductions of the body or body parts and assess their conceptual ambiguity, material impermanence, and implications for the history of Western art.

Encyclopaedia Anatomica
Encyclopaedia Anatomica

Author: Monika von Düring

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783836549318

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With 27 wax bodies and 1500 part and organ studies, this is a veritable cathedral to the human form. Whether it be the skeleton, or vein structures, organs or nerves, arteries or the complexities of the skin, all are reproduced here, in detail.