corporal punishment, executions, and torture; ended inquisitional courts and prisons; established health care for the poor; and forgave the public debt. In a radical departure from his predecessors, Leopold II believed himself to govern by social contract rather than by divine or sovereign right. Leopold II’s decision to open a public science museum in Florence was a central part of his Enlightenment mission to turn his new subjects into ‘citizens’ by educating them in the empirical observation of natural laws. His new museum would make available to the general public the rare and valuable cul tural artefacts previously secreted in the Medici Wunderkammern, or cabinets of wonder. Wunderkammern, the precursors of today’s museums, were private col lections filled with the wonders of the world, both naturalia (natural objects) and artificialia (man-made objects). At this time, and up until the nineteenth century, science as we now understand it did not yet exist; the study of the natural world was largely the province of natural philosophy, which incorporated a variety of fig. 8 Detail of an eighteenth-century portrait of the popular and learned ‘Enlightenment Pope’, Pope Benedict XIV (1675–1758). fig. 9 Detail of a portrait of Leopold II (1747–92), Grand Duke of Tuscany, after he became Holy Roman Emperor in 1790. AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 25 12/01/2016 12:14 THE BIRTH OF THE anaTOmIcal VEnUS[1]
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fig. 10 The perfect proportions of the Venus de’ Medici, a marble sculpture created in the first century bCe, were essential viewing on the Grand Tour. In the eighteenth century, she still bore remains of red on her lips and gold-leaf on her hair. These were rubbed away during restoration in 1815. (28) approaches, including what we would today define as science, aesthetics, and metaphysics, and which attempted to understand a divinely created natural world. The Wunderkammer, an expression of this worldview, was organized not by scientific principles as we now understand them, but as a microcosm of the universe intended to encourage the beholder to marvel at the wonder of God’s works. At this time of unprecedented global exploration, marvels abounded, as European voyages of discovery returned with shiploads of new species, arte facts, and stories from previously unimagined or little-known civilizations. Leopold II appointed his court physician and natural philosopher Felice Fontana (1730–1805) to oversee the creation of his new museum; he remained director of La Specola until his death. Inspired by the famous anatomical wax museum in Bologna that had been established some thirty years earlier, Fontana fig. 10 fig. 11 fig. 11 Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1482–85), commissioned by the Medici family, was a must-see on the Grand Tour. employed one of its sculptors, Giuseppe Ferrini (d. 1815), as artistic leader of his own dedicated in-house workshop for the creation of wax models. Fontana’s grand and ambitious aim was to create an encyclopaedia of the human body in wax—one that would render human anatomy accessible and understandable to the general public, instructing people in scientific principles and the divine architecture of the human body. Fontana hoped that it would end the need for cadavers in the teaching of anatomy: If we succeeded in reproducing in wax all the marvels of our animal machine, we would no longer need to conduct dissections, and students, physicians, surgeons, and artists would be able to find their desired models in a permanent, odour-free, and incorruptible state. The wax models produced by the workshop at La Specola were posed as if alive, healthy, and pain-free, in an attempt to distance the study of anatomy from the contemplation of death and bloody internal organs. The Anatomical Venus was further removed from notions of death and the corpse as she drew AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 28 12/01/2016 12:14 chapter one[1]
(29) on the historical and artistic figure of the Roman goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, evoking a long history of paintings and sculptures of placid, idealized nudes. In fact, each pristine wax model at the museum was the product of the careful study of cadavers that were delivered from the nearby Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Although the collection fell short of its ambition to render all further human dissection unnecessary, today, over two hundred years after their creation, La Specola’s waxworks are still considered remarkably accurate, some of them demonstrating anatomical structures that had yet to be named or described at the time of their making. The best known of all the wax artists, or ceroplasticians, employed at La Specola’s workshop was Clemente Susini, who had trained as an artist and went on to teach at Florence’s Academy offine Arts. Susini began as Ferrini’s assistant fig. 12 Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino as a gift for his young wife, Giulia Varano; it represents an allegory of marriage, and wifely duties of eroticism, fidelity, and motherhood. fig. 12 fig. 13 in 1773, was promoted to lead modeller in 1782, and worked at the museum until his death, when he was succeeded by his assistant. It was under Susini’s over sight that the museum created its finest and most iconic works, among them the ingenious, dissectible Medici Venus. The figure of Venus was no random allusion; by the eighteenth century she had a long-standing relationship with Florence. As Rebecca Messbarger explains, the city had been nicknamed ‘Venus-Fiorenza’ in the sixteenth century to symbolize the fertility, happiness, and beauty offlorence under Medici rule. Depictions of Venus were also, Messbarger notes, a ‘principal organizing theme’ on the Grand Tour, a secular pilgrimage made by scores of wealthy and well- educated young European men, and occasionally women, to acquaint themselves with the artistic achievements of continental Europe. Italy’s treasures loomed large in the Grand Tour, with Florence and its Venuses high on the list: Grand Tourists would visit Botticelli’s iconic Birth of Venus (1482–85) in the Medici country villa, then stop off at the royal gallery of the Uffizi to pay homage to Titian’s sensual Venus of Urbino (1538) and the Venus de’ Medici, a Hellenistic sculp ture and exemplar of perfect female proportions created in the first century bCe. fig. 13 Detail of Johann Joseph Zoffany’s The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–77), depicting Grand Tourists paying homage to the much lauded artworks of the Uffizi Gallery. Titian’s Venus of Urbino and the Venus de’ Medici are prominently displayed. AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 29 12/01/2016 12:14 THE BIRTH OF THE anaTOmIcal VEnUS[1]
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(33) pleasurable way, without need of lecturer or text. By consolidating private collections with customized wax models under one roof and making them avail able free of charge—albeit with separate opening hours for the lower classes, ‘provided they were cleanly clothed’—Leopold II defined his own ‘enlightened absolutist’ idealism. His philosophy was in stark contrast to that of his sister, Marie Antoinette (1755–93), who had married the French king Louis XVI (1754– 93). In France, not long after La Specola’s Medici Venus was crafted, Marie Tussaud (1761–1850) was making wax models of the most famous heads rolling from the guillotine during the French Revolution. From 1771 to 1893, Fontana’s wax workshop produced more than 2,500 wax models for La Specola and a variety of other museums, including life-sized bodies and small anatomical details. A full set of 1,192 wax models was commis sioned by Leopold II’s brother, Emperor Joseph II (1741–90), and transported fig. 16 Engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, Florence (1744). The bodies that served as models for La Specola’s waxes were sourced here. fig. 16 over the Alps to Vienna on the backs of mules and labourers. Intended for use in training military surgeons at the Josephinum, the medico-surgical academy founded by Joseph II in 1785, the models were dismissed by some as expensive, frivolous toys despite their anatomical accuracy, perhaps because the Viennese middle class trusted neither aristocratic opulence nor popular pleasures. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) also ordered forty cases, which unfortunately never arrived in Paris, ending up instead in Montpellier, France, where they can still be seen at the Faculty of Medicine’s anatomical museum. Today, Anatomical Venuses created at La Specola’s workshop can be viewed at museums in Budapest, Pavia, Bologna, and London. A large collection of exquisite waxes still on display AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 33 12/01/2016 12:14 THE BIRTH OF THE anaTOmIcal VEnUS[1]
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