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co n t e n t s i n t RoD u c t i o n: u n v e i l i n g • a n •a n atom i c a l• e n i gm a ( 1 4 ) ( 1 ) t hE • BiR t h•oF • t h e • a n atom i c a l •vEn u s ( 2 0 ) ( 2 ) f rom • s ac r e d • to • s c i e n t i f i c • u s e • o f •wa x ( 6 6 ) ( 3 ) ve n u s • at • t h e • Fa i rg ro u n d ( 1 1 8 ) ( 4 ) E c sta s Y, • F e t i s hi sm, • a n d • D o ll •wo r s h i p ( 1 7 8 ) ( 5 ) v e n u s , •th e •un c a n n y, • a n d • t h e • g h o st i n • t h e •m ac h i n e ( 2 0 0 ) Pl acE s•oF •i n tE R E st ( 2 1 6 ) sElE c t• BiBl i oG RaPhY ( 2 1 8 ) P i c t u r e •cr e d i t s ( 2 2 0 ) in d e x ( 2 2 2 ) ac k n ow l e d gm e n t s ( 2 2 4 ) AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 13 12/01/2016 12:1
(14) u n v e i l i n g • a n a n atom i c a l • e n i gm a The purpose of anatomical images during the period of the Renaissance to the nineteenth century had as much to do with what we would call aesthetic and theological understanding as with the narrower interests of medical illustrators as now understood.... They were not simply instructional diagrams for the doctor technician, but statements about the nature of human beings as made by God in the context of the created world as a whole...they are about the nature of life and death... — martin Kemp & marina WallaCe, Spectacular BodieS (2000) fig. 1 fig. 1 The most iconic dissectible wax Anatomical Venus— also known as the ‘Demountable Venus’ and the ‘Medici Venus’— from the workshop of Clemente Susini at La Specola, Florence, Italy (1780–82). Life-sized. lemente Susini’s Anatomical Venus, created 1780–82, is the perfect object: one whose luxuriously bizarre existence challenges belief. It—or better, she—was conceived as a means of teaching human anatomy without the need for constant dissection, which was messy, ethically fraught, and reliant on scarce cadavers. The Anatomical Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos, between art and science, and between nature and mankind as it was then understood. Often referred to as the ‘Medici Venus’ or the ‘Demountable Venus’, this life-sized, dissectible wax woman with gleaming glass eyes and human hair can still be viewed in her original Venetian glass and rosewood case. She can AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 14 12/01/2016 12:14 IntroductIon
(15) be disassembled into seven anatomically correct layers, revealing at the final remove a tranquil fetus curled in her womb. She and her sisters, wax women in fixed states of anatomical undress sometimes referred to as Slashed Beauties or Dissected Graces, can still be found in a handful of European museums. Supine in their glass boxes, they beckon with a gentle smile or an ecstatic downcast gaze. One idly toys with a plait of real golden human hair; another clutches at the plush, moth-eaten satin cushions of her case as her torso erupts in a spontaneous, bloodless auto-dissection; another is crowned with a golden tiara, while one further wears a silk ribbon tied in a bow around a dangling entrail. Since their creation in late-eighteenth-century Florence, these wax women have seduced, intrigued, and instructed. In the twenty-first century, they also confound, flickering on the edges of medicine and myth, votive and vernacular, fetish and fine art. How can we understand today an object that is at once a seductive representation of ideal female beauty and an explicit demonstration of the inner workings of the body? How can we make sense of an artefact that was once equally at home in the fairground and the medical museum? How oVerleaF Illustrations of the anatomized female body from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. Examples include 1670 paper anatomies with moveable flaps to mimic real dissections (left page, middle row) and a figure half skeleton, half lady of fashion, standing next to an obelisk inscribed with biblical quotations (right page, bottom row, centre), from Life & Death Contrasted, or, an Essay on Woman (c. 1770). can we comprehend a creature memorably described by Holly Myers in the Los Angeles Times as ‘an Enlightenment-era St Teresa ravished by communion with the invisible forces of science’? This book explores the contradictions inherent in the Anatomical Venus and attempts to answer these questions. Drawing on the scholarship of a broad array of medical and art historians, cultural theorists, and philosophers, this book contextualizes the Anatomical Venus, examining the beliefs and practices that led to her creation and revealing how she was received by her contemporary audience. It goes on to investigate the very different ways she came to be framed and perceived in the nineteenth century, and finally to trace her curious after lives in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 15 12/01/2016 12:14 unveiling an anatomical enigma
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(18) The Anatomical Venus begins at the time and place of the creation of the Medici Venus—eighteenth-century Florence, Italy. Staunchly Catholic, with a long tra dition of realistic wax anatomies in the form of sacred ex-votos manufactured for the pilgrims trade, Florence was also the epicentre of the Renaissance, which ushered in a great flowering of naturalistic representation in the arts and an unprecedented popular interest in the study of human anatomy. Ruled