Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access published May 16, 2012

Journal of the History of Collections (2012) pp. 1–21 The Re-Birth of Venus in Florence’s Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History

Rebecca Messbarger

For a number of years after the inauguration of Peter Leopold’s Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History in Florence in 1775, the most powerful magnet at the heart of the collection became the newly exhibited Anatomical Venus, capable of disassembly and recomposition. This article examines the explicit scientific and artistic significance of the Venus within the context of the Royal Museum and, more broadly, how this idealized three-dimensional image of the anatomized female body served Peter Leopold’s mission of popular Enlightenment. A novel instrument of science, an unexpected physics machine, the Downloaded from deconstructable Venus allowed the expert as well as the amateur and even the unschooled virtually to do human dissection themselves and thereby represented a potent challenge to the iconic Venuses of the past regime. My analysis centres on the overt connections and competition of the waxen Venus with classical and Renaissance icons of Medici dynastic reign, just across the Arno in the Uffizi. http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/

SEVERAL years after the opening in 1775 of the progressively by discrete strata the systems and organs Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History in of the body. Although obviously an immaculate con- Florence,1 the Museum’s chief artist Giuseppe Ferrini ception of anatomical dismembering, cleansed of any and his assistant Clemente Susini created from an vestiges of blood, death and decay, the Venus never- array of plaster moulds and great quantities of molten theless evoked the female anatomy specimen in the wax a graphic full-scale figure they christened the iconic dissection scene on the title-page of Andreas anatomical Venus.2 Conjured by classically trained Vesalius’s commanding Fabrica (1543) (Fig. 2). As by guest on June 6, 2012 sculptor’s hands rather than the foamy mingling of Katharine Park has observed, the female cadaver in Uranus’s severed testicles with the living sea, the artful the engraving ‘emphasized the distance between the incarnation of the goddess of beauty, fecundity and (male) anatomist and his (female) object’ and served desire instantly became the most powerful magnet to establish the author as the new empirical anatomist, and featured attraction at the centre of the Museum’s who, with his own hands methodically disclosed and vast anatomical collection. Indeed, among Grand classified her strange and secret entrails, redolent Tourists and ordinary tourists the Venus upstaged symbols of the veiled truths of the human body and of the thousands of natural and mechanical objects on Nature herself.3 Divested of the Vesalian cadaver’s display in room after room of the Torrigiani Palace. crude jumble of burbling viscera as well as of the The idealized female figure evocatively positioned in greedy swarm of male spectators pressing upon the a state of passionate abandon on a silken bed uniquely dissection table for a closer view, the waxen Venus demonstrated the anatomy of the torso, from the sur- would nevertheless seem to occupy the same subal- face musculature just beneath the skin to the glands tern position beneath the master anatomist’s probing of the breast, the organs of the thoracic cavity and scalpel and the spectators’ excited gaze. the remote organs of the lower abdomen, including a gravid uterus with miniature foetus, through parts that could be systematically dismantled and held in Recontextualizing the hand (Fig. 1). More than two centuries years had, of course, passed This layered, palpable presentation of the female since Vesalius had revolutionized anatomical science anatomy alluded, of course, to the experience of an by tossing aside the approved Galenic script, stepping actual dissection in which the anatomist uncovers down from the lector’s throne and boldly taking

© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/jhc/fhs007 REBECCA MESSBARGER Downloaded from

Fig. 1. Anatomical Venus, wax. Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History in Florence. Photo credit: Saulo Bambi.

and the precision tools and technology of the science http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ far more numerous and refined, from scalpels to microscopes, injecting instruments and, indeed, virtual anatomical specimens that surpassed in critical ways the didactic utility of decomposing cadavers. While the Fabrica continued to be a chief iconographic prototype for anatomy studies and illustration during the eighteenth century, the Florentine anatomical Venus

was, in fact, a very different sign of science and anatom- by guest on June 6, 2012 ical truth from Vesalius’s title-page cadaver. It was the product of new scientific technology, greater ana- tomical knowledge and refined practices, a far more expansive and speedy circulation of texts and ideas, and it was, crucially, directed at a new public. The Venus served the edification and delight of the mixed citizenry of the Tuscan Grand Duchy and indeed the wider world. It was intended to be viewed, just as Il Caffè, the premier Italian Enlightenment Fig. 2. Andreas Vesalius, detail of title-page of De humani corporis journal, was intended to be read, likewise ‘by the fabrica, 1543. Courtesy of Bernard Becker Medical Library, grave magistrate and the vivacious maiden; by callous, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis. conservative intellectuals and tender, young minds.’4 The context and site where the new Venus underwent centre stage in the anatomy theatre to perform the its repeated, pristine dissections was, quite simply, no visceral drama of anatomical truth-finding himself. longer the restricted Renaissance anatomy theatre The quarrel of the ancients and the moderns over but the public science museum of a self-consciously experimental anatomy was by this point in the last enlightened nation-state.5 Compared to the sixteenth- quarter of the eighteenth century long settled and century public anatomy in such cities as Bologna and Vesalius’s own authority increasingly overshadowed Padua, where select members of the university and by more knowing and meticulous masters. By 1775, ecclesiastical ranks gathered to view a series of dissec- experimental anatomy was the unquestioned norm, tions during two brief weeks at Carnival, from 1783 to

2 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY

1788, for which numbers have been tallied, Florence’s and the natural order. As General Luigi Ferdinando Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History opened Marsili, founder sixty years prior, in 1714, of Bologna’s its doors annually to 6,000 to 22,000 visitors of every premier Institute of Sciences had aspired, the modern origin and rank.6 philosopher would become a ‘naturalista metodico’ or The difference hinges on a shift from a scientific methodical natural philosopher, engaged in research culture whose prime object was ‘possessing nature’, to and teaching in accordance with the tripartite method borrow from Paula Findlen’s aptly titled book on Italian of ‘exposition, classification, and experiment’ for the Renaissance museums and collecting, to an increas- benefit of all who wished to learn (native and foreign) ingly integrated political and scientific culture during and for the general public welfare.8 Within the sphere the Italian Enlightenment aimed at the broad dissemin- of the Enlightenment science museum, Nature in its ation of scientific knowledge. Renaissance philosophers infinitely various manifestations becomes, at least took ownership of nature, in literal terms, through col- ostensibly, the intellectual birthright of every person. lecting and taxonomy, uncovering and dissection – the In her defence of women’s education published in accumulation and mostly private display of natural 1774, one year before the opening of the Royal

exempla and the prescribed classification based on Museum in Florence, the female mathematician and Downloaded from antique texts of these artefacts in words as well as poet Diamante Medaglia Faini lyrically mapped the images. The collector’s acquisition of natural objects vast province of natural philosophy not only for and their exhibition, whether in his private cabinet or academic élites but also for women, who, of course, studiolo, home laboratory, or even the university hall signified everyone else: or anatomy theatre, exhibited in clear and quantifiable It penetrates the recesses of the earth and scrutinizes the http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ terms to an élite academic brotherhood the scope of marvellous processes that take place therein. It ascends to his knowledge and degree of his cultural prestige. In the heavens and seeks to know the movements of the stars summarizing the cultural and social ideology of the and to observe the order and the regularity that reign there. archetypal early Renaissance museum, Eileen Hooper It contemplates the waters and all the creatures that wriggle within them. And it explains marvellously the prodigious Greenhill turns to the practices of collecting of the phenomena that occur there.9 Medici princes: With telescopes and microscopes, barometers, air and The studiolo of Francesco I (1541-87) was an attempt to hydraulic pumps, electrical machines and pendulums, by guest on June 6, 2012 gather together artifacts that represented the order of the world, to constitute a secret site in and from which the as well as vast exhibits of insects, stuffed birds and prince could position himself symbolically as ruler of the animals from every corner of the globe, and indeed, world. It further operated as a microcosm of art and nature, real and wax botanical and anatomical specimens, the articulating their relationships to the elements, the humours public science museum was the ideal venue for an and the seasons as presented in mythology, literature, his- eclectic public to encounter the cosmic order and to tory and contemporary technology. 7 marvel at the ingenious human inventions that made The Medici exemplum is not, in fact, a casual choice. it knowable. As I aim to show, the centuries of Medici practice and politics of collecting served as the explicit antipode to Archduke Peter Leopold’s re-vision of Enlighten- Reconception ment Florence and his public science museum at its The Florentine Venus, whose intricate anatomical heart. systems and parts were designed for orderly, hands- While scientific collections continued to proliferate on disassembly before a general public, epitomizes the in Italy during the eighteenth century, an increasingly ideal practical means and new accessibility to scientific diverse public gained access and progressively more knowledge of the late-eighteenth-century museum. sites of science received public funds in recognition The Venus was a novel instrument, an unexpected that they expressly served the bene pubblico, or public physics machine,10 by which the expert as well as the good. To that end, the eighteenth-century collection, amateur and even the unschooled could virtually museum and science laboratory could not merely do the dissection themselves.11 Thus, although the ‘show’, therefore, but also had to ‘tell’ or practically anatomized female body in wax on display in Peter demonstrate in accessible terms the workings of nature Leopold’s science centre no doubt recalls the traditional

3 REBECCA MESSBARGER dissection scene epitomized on the title-page of the An ancient trope of the visual and literary arts, Fabrica, it is a faint allusion. With Vesalius, the iconic Venus, of course signifies beauty, desire, and fecundity, professor anatomist, displaced in this virtual dissec- and is a predominant symbol of art itself and its tion scene performed daily in the Royal Museum triumph over nature. As the classical embodiment of likewise by the ‘grave magistrate’ and the ‘vivacious beauty in the Italian Renaissance, Venus was a synec- maiden’ the foreign tourist and the Tuscan citizen, doche of beautiful art.16 In the Florentine context the anatomy specimen is necessarily transformed as well. in which sculpted and painted images of the mythic As Carlino and Park have documented, Renaissance figure proliferated from the mid-fifteenth century, statutes governing the public anatomy required that the symbolism of the Venus is, of course, both ampli- the ignobilitas of the bodies used for public dissection fied and particularized through its associations with be clear and self-evident. Vigorously and multiply the Grand Duchy and the Medici dynasty. Direct othered by law, they were always bodies of the morally ties between Florence and Venus began, as Rebekah and socially excommunicated: the criminal, the for- Compton has shown, with the commission of Botticelli’s eigner, and the untitled.12 In Vesalius’s illustrated Birth of Venus of 1485 and culminated in the seventeenth

dissection scene, the female body he shows himself century with the strategic creation of the mythic figure Downloaded from dismembering not only died on the gibbet for crimes of Fiorenza and its conflation with Venus by Cosimo I against society, as he is at pains to explain in the text, in his campaign to advertise by means of this hybrid but is in this exhibition also a sexual excommunicant, symbol the Florentine duchy’s prosperity under the alien female in the masculine realm of science Medici dynastic reign.17 These connections will be 13 and the anatomy theatre. Very different connotations discussed in greater length below, as will the critical http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ attend the Venus in Florence’s Royal Museum. ways in which the anatomical Venus departs from the It is important to note that under the authority of prototypical Venuses de’ Medici. Most obviously, the the Enlightenment Pope Benedict XIV, who reigned idealized waxen vision of feminine beauty does not from 1740 to 1758, there was a notable dissipation of the end at the outward form – the graceful nude figure, odour of iniquity that had traditionally surrounded flawless skin, and flowing hair – but extends to its lay- the dissection scene, and especially the dismembered ered, subterranean anatomical depths. Its perfection cadaver at its core. Benedict raised the stature of ana- is surface and core, whole and painstakingly parsed to tomical science to the level of other empirical sciences the smallest and most secreted bodily part. And more by guest on June 6, 2012 such as physics by establishing the first chair of surgery than a symbol of fruitfulness and fertility, with its visible, at the University of Bologna with regular courses in indeed, touchable foetus, the anatomical Venus is fecund human dissection, and by founding Italy’s first anatomy in fact. This re-birth of Venus from a novel coupling of museum within Bologna’s internationally acclaimed art and science is symbolic of a re-conceptualization of Institute of Sciences, complete with spectacular life- Florence and of the conquest of Renaissance cultural sized figures of the anatomical body created from authority during the Florentine Enlightenment Age. naturalistically coloured wax.14 As I will discuss later at greater length, the Pope’s museum was the direct inspiration, the progenitor, in fact, of the wax anatomy Surpassing the Medici collection of Florence’s Royal Museum. Remarkably, as Archbishop of Bologna, Benedict also sent out a I believe that a Sovereign, even a hereditary one, is nothing Notification to all of the city’s rectors commanding other than a delegate and servant of his people, for whom he exists, and to whom he owes all his labour, his pain and his that they encourage their parishioners to donate the care. I believe that every country must have a fundamental bodies of their kin, ‘dead by whatever means’, for the law, or contract between the people and the sovereign that noble and publicly beneficial purpose of anatomical limits the authority and power of the Sovereign. dissection.15 Thus did the ignobilitas of the dissected Peter Leopold, letter to his brother Emperor Joseph II, 1780.18 body wane to an extent in Italy during the eighteenth century. The anatomical Venus must be viewed not The magnificent ceiling frescoes of Gregorio Guglielmi, only within this reformed moral and scientific context commissioned in 1755 by the empress Maria Theresa but also within the unique milieu of the mid-eighteenth- for the Grand Gallery of her Schönbrunn summer century Grand Duchy of Florence. Palace on the outskirts of Vienna, allegorize the fruitful

4 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY rule of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine over its vast the Medici crest in the Schönbrun allegorical painting dominions. The central fresco shows the imposing venerating the munificent and fruitful dominion of figures of the Empress and her husband Francis the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, would later reappear Stephan surrounded by personifications and attend- in portraits of the Archduke Peter Leopold to sym- ant symbols of their subject territories. Conspicuous bolize his authority in Tuscany (Fig. 4). among these scenes is a looming alabaster Medici Peter Leopold’s political programme would come crest, four of whose familiar balls are in view. Yet to affect every aspect of Tuscan life and raise the the emblem of Florentine dynastic glory is not only Duchy from a long period of economic and cultural leached of its traditional gold and red colours but is decline under the Medici and the provisional Austrian capped by a royal red Austrian imperial crown19 (Fig. 3). administration into a model of civic health and good The symbolism is clear: the Austrian empire now governance.20 With his young political conscience surmounts Medici political and cultural authority nourished on Montesquieu’s L’esprit des lois (1748), through its takeover of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Ludovico Antonio Muratori’s manual of enlightened From 1737, when the gouty and perpetually bed- absolutism Della pubblica felicita’ (1749) and the greatest

ridden Gian Gastone de’ Medici died, ending rather genealogical tree of knowledge in human history, Downloaded from anticlimactically 300 years of his family’s dynastic L’Encyclopédie (1751-72) of Diderot and d’Alembert, rule, Austria asserted a sovereign claim over this the orphaned Grand Duchy of Tuscany was the ideal cradle of the Renaissance and Medici power and influ- site for Peter Leopold to translate his political phil- ence. Yet, it was not until Maria Theresa’s third son, osophy into political policy. Over the course of his

the eighteen-year-old Peter Leopold, took up resi- twenty-five-year reign, the Archduke worked to enhance http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ dence in Florence in 1765 as Archduke of Tuscany the bene pubblico through the rational administration that the new regime and the political reformation of the state would put down roots. It was an agenda vig- orously anti-Medicean in spirit and in deed that aimed to replace arcane Renaissance glories nostalgic- ally evoked by the display of high art and antiquities in restricted palaces, galleries, country villas, libraries and chapels, with Enlightenment egalitarian civic and by guest on June 6, 2012 cultural progress for the state and general public well- being. Notably, the same imperial crown that topped

Fig. 3. Giuseppe Guglielmi, Detail of the Central Fresco of the Fig. 4. Teodoro Viero, portrait of Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke Great Gallery, representing the prosperity of the ‘Monarchia of Tuscany, hand-coloured engraving in Raccolta di Stampe che austriaca’, dated 1760. © Scholβ Schönbrunn Kultur-und rappresentano figure ed abiti di varie nazioni (Venice 1783). Courtesy Betriebsges.m. b. H./ Photographer: Alexander Koller. of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, www.raremaps.com.

5 REBECCA MESSBARGER of state authority and public institutions, ecclesiastical Peter Leopold’s reforms have rightly been seen in reforms, and the progressive transformation of the terms of the political and cultural instrumentalization economic, judicial, health, agricultural, and educa- of experimental science in which he had been schooled tional systems. Among the many concrete reforms he and that he continued to promote and indeed to prac- enacted was the unification of Tuscan territories, tice informally throughout his life.25 Experimental establishment of free commerce in grain, reform of philosophy and science provided a methodological the ecclesiastical mortmain, eradication of inquisi- model and intellectual framework for instituting and torial courts and prisons, the establishment of a pro- legitimizing his reforms in Tuscany.26 Yet they were gressive penal code and the abolition of torture and also critical ends in themselves.27 The integration of the death penalty, the separation of police and judi- scientific methods and means, Enlightenment reforms, cial power, the transformation of Medici fortresses dot- and anti-Medicean cultural policies finds their most ted across Tuscany for publicly useful aims, the concrete manifestation in the Royal Museum of Physics establishment of modern agricultural practices, the and Natural History. The premier scientific collection cultivation of a new political class for the governance in Europe at the time, of countless animal and plant of Tuscany, the reorganization and development of specimens from around the world along with ingenious Downloaded from a health care system directed especially at the lower man-made scientific instruments, furnished patrons classes, the elimination of the public debt, the unifica- with a direct experience of the physical universe and tion of the customs tax as well as the system of weights the natural laws that governed it. The Museum was, and measures, wholesale educational reform from in fact, a site where Enlightenment science served 28 primary schools to academies and the University of to foster Enlightenment citizenship. The first truly http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ Pisa, and the establishment of schools for girls.21 In public museum in Italy, it was open to all (provided the words of Adam Wandruszka, author of the defini- they were decently dressed), free of charge, and tive biography of Peter Leopold, ‘Instruction meant summoned Tuscans from every rank and corner of for him the education of useful citizens, respectful the Grand Duchy, men, women and children alike, to of the law, afraid of God, active and responsible nothing less than a direct encounter with the natural collaborators of the public good, it meant a fusion history of the world. Its vast collections comprised of the classes and the elimination of social barriers, botanical, zoological, and mineralogical specimens the formation therefore of a unified social class, collected from such faraway territories as North and by guest on June 6, 2012 cultured property owners, that would form the South America. Its physics collection included the bone structure of civil society.’22 Among the most historic telescopes, barometers and other instruments progressive reforms never realized by Peter Leopold of the venerated Cimento academy founded by Galileo’s was the adoption of a constitution to establish the students in the seventeenth century, which, until the first representative monarchy in Europe.23 It was, opening of the Museum, had been on display in the in fact, in the Edict for the Constitutional Forma- Mathematics Room of the Uffizi Gallery, as well as tion of the Tuscan State that the old Medici regime modern machines bought from prestigious private served most explicitly as the degenerate foil for collections, commissioned by the Museum, or expertly made and lavishly embellished in-house. An under- Peter Leopold’s enlightened rule: pinning rationale for the establishment of the Museum Our principal duty is to bring to fruition for our most loved was that experimental science and natural philosophy subjects a government . . . that assures them all possible represented spheres of knowledge and intellectual human happiness in the honest exercise of their civil liberty and in the sure and peaceful enjoyment of their labour, of pursuits at variance with the cultivation of aesthetic their reputation and all the licit means that serve the sensibility and connoisseurship traditionally fostered necessities of life . . . Regarding the history of Tuscan by the art gallery. The Royal Gallery of the Uffizi, in legislation we saw with abhorrence that the unhappiness the midst of concurrent refurbishment and reform, and turbulence of the times during which the throne of would therefore have a natural history counterpart in the extinct Medici family was established, a government the Royal Museum to be housed in Palazzo Torrigiani arose without any fundamental rule of law, and that was totally arbitrary and unjust because it was founded on just across the river from the Uffizi and 100 yards from violence and not on the consent of the people, who alone the Pitti Palace.29 The objects, tools and operations of can legitimize the institution.24 science required their own space and conventions of

6 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY display and the science museum would occupy a dis- The result was the deliberate alteration and, indeed, tinct cultural and civic position within the enlightened sacrifice to a degree of the Medicean patrimony itself. city-state. Art served civic aims in Peter Leopold’s Royal It is safe to assume, in fact, that Peter Leopold con- Gallery and Art Academy, which stood unequivocally sidered scientific knowledge and the practical applica- opposed to the interwoven spolia and sacra of Medici art tion of its methods and findings to be more relevant exhibition.36 As Hooper Greenhill has observed, the to the cultivation of the enlightened citizen and the Medici’s commission, collection and display of luxury modern state than edification in the sublime arts. goods, including artwork, in their private palaces Significantly, in the prolific accounts he kept of his functioned to inspire reverence for the family’s wealth travels throughout the territories of the Grand Duchy, and power. The Medici treasures were not merely Peter Leopold made not a single reference to a work quantitative proof of their political supremacy and of art.30 Historians who have studied his Tuscan reign networks of influence, but were purposely imbued frequently have drawn attention to the Great Duke’s with mythic and allegorical meaning that served both underdeveloped artistic sensibilities as well as his to legitimize and to sublimate their dynastic rule.37 ambition to streamline the work of Tuscany’s cultural Their collections of antiquities, rare artefacts, jewels, Downloaded from institutions.31 Indeed, certain literati residing in Florence religious icons and high art performed semiotically as at the time considered the Archduke not merely indif- vestiges, signs and extensions of the prince, indissol- ferent but a detriment to high art and culture: uble from his person and the glory and prosperity of 38 The Arts alone my musing hours employ, the patria flourishing ostensibly under his reign. In For now no more the blue-eyed Pleasures rove, diametric opposition to the Renaissance Temples or http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ Arno’s green banks, or Boboli thy grove!32 Theatres of Knowledge erected by the Medici, Peter Leopold’s Enlightenment gallery of art and museum Notwithstanding this disparaging view, however, Peter of science redefined connoisseurship by democra- Leopold did in fact enact several important reforms tizing culture and making it socially useful. In the new aimed at restoring the authority of Florence in the Tuscany, the show of rare and magnificent cultural visual arts. Yet these reforms were, in themselves, artefacts no longer sanctified and secured the he- rooted in his experimental philosophical view. As gemony of the prince and the ruling class. Indeed, in

Cochrane has noted, he ‘became so infatuated with by guest on June 6, 2012 his motu proprio of 5 August 1780, Peter Leopold exact rules, methods and order that he tried to extend abrogated privileges established under Medici rule them to the realm of culture.’33 Not only did the Arch- and made the excavation, acquisition and display of duke undertake a thorough renovation of the Uffizi antiquities a right of all Tuscan citizens: Gallery in accordance with the emergent science of the history of art and modern doctrines of art classification, As we are desirous of freeing our most beloved subjects from periodization and display,34 in 1783 he transformed the constraints to which they were liable because of the mu- the Florentine Academy of the Art of Design (Accademia nicipal statutes and the laws that originated with our royal predecessors (the Medici), with respect to treasure, excavations e Compagnia dell’Arte del Disegno), founded in 1561, and extractions of antique monuments outside of the State into the enlarged and highly structured Academy of and wishing to recall these objects to the natural equity, we Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze), which command: 1. In the future, it is licit and permitted for anyone, overtly privileged the current neoclassical canon. without any preventive licence, to undertake excavations His renewal and reform of the venerated Florentine and to find and to make their own monuments from past centuries, coins, and other precious antique things . . .39 patrimony in the visual arts reflected the dominant political and philosophical principles of his regime. The Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History As art historians Miriam Fileti Mazza and Bruna that originally developed from the scattered Wunderkam- Tomasello have noted, the Archduke’s reorganization mern of the Medici reveals perhaps more concretely of the Uffizi Gallery in particular signified ‘the trans- than any other cultural project undertaken by the lation of a vast cultural manifesto in which the realiza- Archduke the extent to which opposition to the Medici’s tion of a new museography was wholly in line with cultural ambitions informed his own cultural initia- the spirit of other reforms he inaugurated in its drive tives. Publicity for the opening of the Royal Museum to privilege principles of simplification and clarity.’35 in 1775 explicitly stressed the contrast between Peter

7 REBECCA MESSBARGER

Leopold’s enlightened educational programme and and curiosity about the world around them and thereby the old cultural order: an increased sense of fulfilment. Through their experience of the exhibitions in this modern science If Florence has, until now, summoned people from the most distant nations to admire its rarities and greatness, and museum Tuscan citizens and, indeed, all visitors would above all its magnificent Gallery, which must be credited to also come to internalize spontaneously to an important the Medici People, former sovereigns of this state, there degree the empirical method essential to discerning soon will be even greater reasons for Foreigners’ admiration truth from falsehood. The Museum thus promised and for the most elevated geniuses to judge of far greater to fulfill what Ferdinando Paoletti, one of the most and surer utility this immense collection of sublime and philosophical genius compiled by Peter Leopold, the provi- influential economic and political theorists of Peter dent and vigilant Sovereign of Tuscany. If it is right to Leopold’s regime, held to be an essential didactic glorify the Medici family, which achieved illustriousness responsibility of the Enlightenment nation state with and immortality for posterity, how much more should the respect to its citizenry: present age of Peter Leopold [be glorified], which is entirely intent on revitalizing the sciences in Tuscany, and with Evidence is the only means established by that great author evident liberality opens its treasures to enlighten its people in of nature to combat false opinions and to gently bind the order to make them happier by making them more learned?40 will of mortals. Since in all that does not exceed the limits of Downloaded from human understanding, that truth is said to be evident that, From these statements several overlapping goals emerge after an attentive and most diligent examination, renders it for the foundation of the Museum: the displacement certain to our intellect, such that it convinces and forces 43 of Medici cultural authority; the expansion of Peter [our intellect] to embrace and follow it. Leopold’s local and international celebrity as enlight- The Museum with its vast primary evidence of the http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ ened sovereign; the attraction of foreign visitors by natural order, as well as its many scientific instruments means of a new Tour itinerary that extends beyond for discerning that order where the eye and hand the well travelled path to Medici art and antiquities to alone cannot perceive it, would teach its visitors to rec- include modern cultural sites; the renewal of Tuscan ognize these truths and to act upon them within the scientific culture; the popular exhibition of natural context of their civic and mundane lives. By ‘making history and the subjects and technology of empirical visible and public the great encyclopedia of scientific science; and the simultaneous education, civilization knowledge,’ as Simone Contardi has observed, the and entertainment of the general populace. Museum propelled its visitors on a course of ‘self- by guest on June 6, 2012 Advance publicity for the Museum moreover enlightenment.’44 Through their acquaintance with proclaimed its superiority to all other museums in the objects and methods of physics and natural his- Europe in terms of the quantity and the quality of tory, the general public would moreover, according to its collections: Maerker, come to interiorize the principles regulating the natural world and thereby learn to regulate them- This nascent museum embraces not merely all of nature in 45 its greatest possible extension, but everything of import- selves. Visiting the Museum was not, therefore, merely ance, that is most beautiful, most useful, and most ingenious a healthy diversion for Tuscans, but a civic duty. that men have been able to find or to imagine. The collec- The cultural missions of the Gallery of the Uffizi tion of physics and astronomical machines alone, while still and the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History not entirely complete, is such that for its beauty, its novelty, just across the Ponte Vecchio from each other were, in perfection and size exceeds all of the museums established until now in Europe.41 fact, markedly different. The Gallery tour presumed a certain cultivation and art historical preparation of Above all, the singular and combined beauty, utility its visitors while the Museum expected no preparation and ingenuity of the most exquisite creations of nature at all. The Museum, as its advance publicity made and of man featured in the Royal Museum served its plain, served to promote understanding of the natural mission: ‘To enlighten its people in order to make order, from microscopic to telescopic truths, through them happier by making them more learned’ (per illumi- a comprehensive display of artefacts, meticulous models, nare il suo popolo per renderlo felice col farlo più culto).42 and scientific tools. The Gallery’s collection of antiqui- Direct knowledge and hands-on experience of all man- ties and artwork, by contrast, continued to fulfil many ner of exempla of the natural world would, in the ideal, of the quixotic goals of a time past.46 The wistful desire awaken in an uninitiated public new comprehension expressed by Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, director of

8 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY the Uffizi at the height of Peter Leopold’s cultural terpieces, the Museum demystified the esoteric aes- reforms, for improving the taste and mores of élite thetic experience of the Gallery. Tuscans by exposing them to ‘il bello’, contains at It was Peter Leopold’s chosen director of the Royal least a hint of nostalgia for a former social order: Museum of Physics and Natural History, the natural The education of youth must include the exposition of stat- philosopher Felice Fontana (1730-1805), who articu- ues, paintings and other rarities held in the Royal Gallery; lated and ardently defended the Enlightenment aims the eye would then become accustomed to discerning of the Museum and incessantly laboured for twenty-five beauty and the rich would be drawn to a noble luxury worth years to elevate it as a native and Grand Tour destin- far more than their stables, their horses and so many other ation to the heights of the venerated Gallery.50 frivolities.47 And the visitors to the two cultural sites were very different, with élite foreigners and learned, socially The Museum under Felice Fontana privileged Tuscans making up the main public of the From its inauguration, the Royal Museum appropri- Gallery while, as mentioned previously, Tuscans from ated and redeployed the cultural authority of the every region and social class of the Grand Duchy Medici art collection in order to advance its scientific Downloaded from formed the majority of the visitors to the Museum. aims. In volume I of the Inventory of the Royal Cabinet From the registries of the Royal Museum we know [of Physics and Natural History] compiled at Peter that visitors included native aristocrats and Grand Leopold’s request soon after the opening of the Tourists, local and foreign scholars, professionals, Museum in 1775, replicas in wax of two of the most

members of the court, and religious. Remarkably, celebrated statues in the Uffizi are listed among the http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ between a quarter and a half of all visitors were anatomical collection: women. Indeed, the surviving visitor logs from 1783-8 A grand cabinet set upon a stand with four feet. This cab- recorded numerous all-women groups attending the inet is formed of four glass sides encased in wood veneered 48 Museum. Also striking is the great number of middle- in red wood with the same veneer being used for the feet of and lower-class Tuscan families, mothers, fathers and the stand. children, who went to the Museum on a cultural out- Placed on top of a platform of gilded wood and enclosed ing. The highlight and greatest draw for visitors of all within the cabinet is a Statue cast in wax and colored accord- ing to Nature representing the Statue that is found in the classes and national origins was the wax anatomical Royal Gallery, named the Idol, or the Apollo . . . by guest on June 6, 2012 collection, which appeared to fulfil most perfectly A large cabinet equal to the other described in Room the stated mission of the Museum director Felice Four, in which is enclosed a Statue cast in Wax, and col- Fontana and his sovereign to showcase ‘that which is oured representing the Statue that is preserved in the Royal most beautiful, most useful and ingenious.’49 Gallery known by the name of Venus de’ Medici, erected on a platform of gilded wood.51 Thus it was the cultural priorities of the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History that the There is no other reference to these figures in the regime privileged over those of the Royal Gallery for records of the Museum, nor is there any account of inaugurating a new Florentine Renaissance. Although what became of the wax facsimiles of the Medici the Museum, like the Gallery, served to cultivate spe- Apollo and Venus (Figs 5-6).52 Their presence among cialized knowledge and the moral virtue that attended the anatomical waxworks must therefore be interpreted this knowledge, it was an egalitarian pedagogical in terms of the evolving and varied relationship enterprise for which aesthetics played an important between art, craft and science in the Museum, par- but auxiliary role in the distillation of scientific truth. ticularly, but not exclusively, in the rooms dedicated As will be seen, art, including foremost icons of the to human anatomy. Medici collection, was placed in the service of science Most fundamentally, the Venus and Apollo rep- to render the objects and methods of science more resent ideal female and male beauty. The original pleasing, comprehensible and vital to a general public. sculptures were admired and studied on site in the Art served in the Museum to translate into well-rec- Uffizi Gallery with near obsessive ardour during the ognized visual terms the sublime of nature. At the eighteenth century, both by the new intellectual class same time, by quoting in its life-size wax models of of art historians, including J. J. Winklemann, and human anatomy from the Gallery’s sacralized mas- by numerous Grand Tourists visiting Florence. (More

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will be said about the Grand Tour focus on the Venus de’ Medici in the subsequent discussion of the ana- tomical Venus.) In his revered History of Ancient Art, Winklemann, after giving meticulous proof of her perfect proportionality, expressed with lyrical gusto the desire, both transcendent and earthly, provoked by the ancient sculpture of the nude Goddess of Love: ‘the Medicean Venus resembles a rose which after a lovely dawn unfolds its leaves to the rising sun . . . Methinks I see her as when for the first time she stood naked before the artist’s eyes.’53 The Apollo, or Idol, as it was better known, was a smaller bronze sculpture inherited by the Medici in 1630 and placed on display in the Uffizi from 1646. As with the Venus, scholars

and tourists alike venerated it for its mathematically Downloaded from perfect proportions and supreme grace.54 Charles Nicolas Cochin exemplifies views of the Apollo when he writes in his travelogue of 1758 that he saw in the Uffizi ‘un figure d’homme de bronze, d’un ensemble

& d’un contour fort léger, élégant & beau’ that was of http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ the highest possible taste.55 What function do these wax copies of celebrated classical male and female sculptures serve in the con- Fig. 5. The Idol or Medici Apollo, Greek, fifth-century BC, bronze. text of the anatomical wax collection at the heart of Museo Archeologico, Florence, Italy. Scala/Art Resource, NY. the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History? As foremost signs of ideal physical and aesthetic beauty, as synecdoches of art itself, they elucidate by

association with the anatomical models the intrinsic by guest on June 6, 2012 order, splendour and consequentiality of the physical world. The replicated icons of proportional and beau- tiful male and female nude bodies, serve paradoxically, in fact, as both analogy and contrast to the anatomical wax bodies cast and coloured ‘according to Nature’. The mythical and ‘real’ bodies are both ideally con- ceived, but fulfil the divergent purposes of art and science. Additionally, the whole Uffizi figures mitigate the discomfort of viewing anatomized bodies. Finally, by their glorified presence in the midst of the anatomy collection, the Venus and Apollo transfer their cultural cachet as Uffizi masterpieces on to the anatomical models. During his twenty-five years as director of the Museum, Fontana56 gave special priority to the beauty and artistry of its man-made scientific collections. As we have seen in the publicity for the opening of the Museum, he promised that the collections would ‘comprise everything that is most beautiful, most use-

Fig. 6. Venus de’ Medici, first-century BC, marble. Uffizi Gallery, ful, and most ingenious that men have been able to Florence, Italy. Alinari/Art Resource, NY. find or to imagine.’ He highlighted in particular the

10 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY beauty of the physics collection, which formally precisely with that superior order, richness and means as is included the anatomical wax models, and ‘exceeds done in regular courses, so that it is enough to know how to all of the museums established until now in Europe’ read to understand first hand the natural history of what- ever is found in the Royal Museum, in which anyone can both for the exquisite form of the instruments as well as come because of the generosity of His Royal Highness, who their function.57 As Paola Bertucci has shown, Fon- made this place public. In fact, natives and foreigners come tana commanded that the barometers, pendulums, daily to reap its benefits.60 telescopes, hydraulic pumps and other physics How effectively to democratize and to render trans- machines be created from and embellished with the parent scientific knowledge (lasciar fare) was a question finest materials to enhance the pleasure and utility of that would, in fact, obsessively occupy Fontana for their public exhibition: the rest of his career. For the director, perfect intelli- Decorated exotic woods and elegant design added to the gibility was most important and difficult to achieve in entertaining spectacularity of experimental demonstrations, the Museum’s demonstration of human anatomy and the visual pleasure of looking at rare materials and high- quality craftsmanship. To give one example pertaining to physiology. It was here that the ‘visible manifestation this collection, the ‘model of machine for operating four of the truth,’ in the words of Contardi, could most hydraulic pumps simultaneously,’ with its inlaid wooden effectively enlighten and directly engage the museum Downloaded from pavement and its four black horses modeled in bronze, visitor in the Science of Man and substantively deepen exemplarily demonstrates the combination of elegance and one’s knowledge of self.61 usefulness embodied in the Physics Cabinet.58 When the Museum opened in 1775, the anatomy Fontana redefined for the Museum the ancient princi- collection occupied six rooms and represented the ples of persuasion: docere, delectare, movere. To facilitate anatomical body in a wide variety of modes, from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ the scientific learning of Tuscan citizens and other iconic, three-quarter size écorchés demonstrating the visitors, the machines and models of the Museum muscle and bone structures essential to anatomical needed to delight in order teach and to move. This design, to complex structures, discrete organs and didactic transformation of the Museum’s patrons had other isolated components to the microscopic scale of to take place, moreover, without the mediation of an particular interest to specialists in the science.62 The expert guide, and as a result only of an encounter with rooms exhibited all body systems from the circulatory the objects and exhibitions in the Museum. to the nervous, the lymphatic to the digestive, etc, by guest on June 6, 2012 As Fontana came to define it, fulfilment of Peter with internal organs shown successively in situ and in Leopold’s mission of popular enlightenment thus isolation as in the course of dissection. The sensory required exhibitions and displays in the Royal Museum organs, at the centre of contemporary international whose meaning would be perfectly evident to the debate on the anatomy and physiology of perception, untrained eye. Fontana was adamant throughout his received distinct attention in the Museum, as did the long tenure as director that the Royal Museum needed heart, considered the organ of irritability by proponents no guides because it could achieve a transparent com- such as Fontana of Albrecht von Haller’s theory.63 prehensibility through the organization and display of Emphasis on obstetrics and the female reproductive its objects. It was his ambition that for every visitor to system, another focal point of contemporary scientific the Museum, from the specialist to the initiate, ‘at debate, was also paramount in the Museum. 59 a glance everything is seen, everything is known.’ The 486 wax figures displayed in glass and wooden Exhibitions were arbitrated at most by identifying cases at the inauguration of the Museum issued from placards and schematic illustrated or written explana- the combined authority of bodies and books, in other tions and required for complete understanding only a words numerous dissected cadavers and recognized basic ability to read. Fontana was unequivocal: anatomical atlases.64 Although the anatomical body Natural history, as it is currently displayed in the Royal appeared in the six rooms whole, truncated and in Museum, does not seem to need a professor or a university parts, animate as well as defunct, each of these modes course to teach it and it was, in fact, organized so that none of representation adhered to a discrete yet always would be needed. A course in natural history is nothing other than a systematic explanation of the various artefacts idealized aesthetic. In keeping with Winkelmann’s that have been found scattered in confusion here and there dominant neoclassical theories, the écorchés quoted across the earth. These artefacts are displayed and explained classical and Renaissance sculptures as well as classically

11 REBECCA MESSBARGER idealized illustrations from master anatomical atlases 1754, and Anatomia uteri umani gravidi published by such as Bernhard Siegfried Albinus’s Tabulae sceleti et Smellie’s pupil William Hunter one year prior to the musculorum corporis humani published in 1747.65 The opening of the Museum, myriad truncated female ‘musclemen’, replicated from Albinus in wax by the torsos graphically displayed the uterus, often with Museum were, of course, themselves quotations of foetus in view and in various positions at the stage of classical sculpture (Figs 7-8).66 Notwithstanding the parturition (Figs 10-11).69 common assertion by historians that Fontana repre- It is noteworthy that this highly mixed mode of sented only the living body, the collection in the Royal representing the body – as idealized and true-to-life, Museum included abundant examples of lifeless whole and in parts, vital and lifeless, for a diverse heads, limbs and whole human figures.67 However, public of anatomy experts, the unschooled, scientists, these representations had none of the macabre or and artists – was a marked departure from the art of putrid about them, but were instead pristine taxonomic anatomical modelling in Bologna, the direct ante- visions of the dissected body reminiscent of illustra- cedent and inspiration for the Florentine collection. tions in early modern anatomical atlases68 (Fig. 9). Fontana had studied anatomy in Bologna from 1755

In the specific case of the obstetric models, in exact to 1757, soon after the opening of the first anatomical Downloaded from adherence to the dominant contemporary texts on the wax museum in Italy by Pope Benedict XIV and at reproductive female body, namely William Smellie’s the height of international celebrity of the Bolognese A Sett of Anatomical Tables with Explanations and an anatomical wax modellers, Ercole Lelli, and the couple Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery, published in Giovanni Manzolini and Anna Morandi Manzolini.70 http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on June 6, 2012

Fig. 7. Albinus, muscle man, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani, Tabula III, 1747. Courtesy of Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine, Fig. 8. Detail of écorché, wax. Courtesy of the Museum of Saint Louis. Natural History Florence. Photo credit: Saulo Bambi.

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Fig. 10. Workshop of Clemente Susini. Gravid uterus with twins. Wax. Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History Florence. Fig. 9. Model in wax of the nervus occipitalis major, Nervus vagus. Photo credit: Saulo Bambi. Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History Florence. Photo credit: Saulo Bambi. her celebrated series on the sensory organs, for

The Bolognese modellers were all professionally trained example, she represents not merely the anatomical by guest on June 6, 2012 artists, who gained expertise subsequently in ana- structures of the eye, the ear, the nose, hand and tomical dissection and wax anatomical design. Anna mouth, but instead the complex physiology of sight, Morandi, the most acclaimed of the three modellers, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Although her waxworks died in 1774, one year before the opening of the Royal gracefully evoke the living body in action, nowhere in Museum in Florence, and represents both the apex her collection does a dramatic aesthetic distract from and the end of the golden age of the anatomical mod- a precise study of the structure and function of the eller in Italy. Morandi dissected cadavers and ‘fresh body’s parts.71 There were, moreover, no eroticized parts’ herself from which she then created meticulous figures, like the anatomical Venus of the Royal series of wax models of anatomical systems and parts Museum, among the Bolognese anatomical wax as in dissection specifically for use by medical practi- collections by Morandi or her Bolognese colleagues. tioners, as well as for her own specialist demonstrations Finally, in sharp contrast with the strictly hierarchical of human anatomy and physiology in her household production of anatomical wax models for the Royal studio. Her intricate anatomical waxworks required Museum, which involved myriad manual labourers, explanation, which she provided in the form of a from barber-surgeons to academically trained artists, 250-page companion notebook. Not only did her models artisans to professors of surgery, working under Fon- serve unswervingly as instruments of anatomical tana’s strict direction, Morandi’s authority extended to science, her imaging of the body evinced a coherent every aspect of the science and art of anatomical wax aesthetic. Anna Morandi Manzolini represented only design. The shift in didactic function and aesthetic of the the living body, from skin to skeletal core, from whole Florentine anatomical wax works is most fully revealed appendage or bodily system to miniscule part, in the by the life-size wax figures, the focal point at the centre act of fulfilling its essential physiological functions. In of each of the anatomy rooms of the Royal Museum.

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(posterior male); the lymphatic system (male); the lymphatic vessels of the thoracic and abdominal cavities (female); the vasa mesenterica (female); the central ner- vous system (male); and the digestive system (female). It is worthy of note that the life-size female figures serve to demonstrate what might be called lower order bodily systems – digestive, mesenteric, reproductive – centred in the lower thoracic and abdominal cavities. In the publicity written, presumably, by Fontana for the opening of the Museum, the beauty of the wax anatomies was emphasized to the point of hyperbole: ‘Beautiful is the preparation of the fifth pair of nerves, beautiful that of thoracic duct, beautiful that of the seminal vesicles, and most beautiful that of the heart.’73

As Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace have observed, Downloaded from these life-size male and female models did not merely demonstrate the anatomical structures and physio- logical functions, but through canonical poses and pathos they evoked masterworks of the art historical

canon: dying warriors, reclining river gods, volup- http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ tuous goddesses, and rapturous Christian saints.74 Distinct among these figures is, of course, the Venus, the only wax figure in the Royal Museum that could be dismantled to reveal successively, as in dis- section, the complex parts and organs of the thoracic Fig. 11. Charles Grignion after Jan van Rymsdyk. Twins , in utero and abdominal cavities of an expectant female, 1751/4, engraving. From William Smellie, A Sett of Anatomical Tables, with Explanations, and an Abridgement, of the Practice of including the uterus with miniscule foetus in view. The Midwifery, with a View to Illustrate a Treatise on That Subject, and demountable anatomical Venus was, of course, the most by guest on June 6, 2012 Collection of Cases (London, 1754), pl. 10. Courtesy of Bernard transparent expression of the physics of the body and the Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of most sublime. ‘With a glance’ the least experienced Medicine, Saint Louis. dilettante could comprehend and wonder at the perfect structure and ideal functions of the core organs, anatom- These life-size, animate anatomical figures were the ical systems and procreative potential of the human masterpieces of the Royal Museum that most fully inte- body. Beauty and utility uniquely merged in the Venus grated the ideal scientific and aesthetic principles of their figure, expanding in the process the cultural patrimony creators. Although Fontana was known for the obsessive of Tuscany as well as the modes of teaching anatomy control he exerted over the design and production of the and physiology to a broad public. anatomical models, the traditionally trained artists at the Museum, Giuseppe Ferrini and Clemente Susini, no doubt influenced the prevailing classical aesthetic, Re-excavating the Florentine Venus themes, postures and artistic allusions that distinguished this group of models.72 Fontana alone determined the He may be seen every day about eleven or twelve in the anatomical themes and their scientific illustration, Tribune, seated opposite of the Venus, which appears to be however. The recumbent, whole body, masculine and the exclusive object of his adoration. Anna Brownell Jameson, Diary of an Ennuyée. feminine figures demonstrate with meticulous accuracy an expansive array of anatomical parts and systems, The antique tie between the myth of Venus, goddess including the ligaments, joints and tendons (male); the of love, beauty, fertility, and marriage, who sprang complete cardiovascular system (male); sections of the from the froth of the sea and the myth of her false vascular system (male); the veins (male); the arteries namesake the Most Serene maritime Republic of

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Venice born on the waves of the Adriatic captivated renowned Venuses of any age, Titian’s unabashedly eighteenth-century Grand Tourists and was an un- sensual Venus of Urbino and the Hellenistic Venus remitting leitmotif of their travelogues.75 Hester pudica de’ Medici. Lynch Piozzi, in the published account of her The Tribuna Venuses, icons of classical and Grand Tour through Italy, expresses the prevailing Renaissance feminine perfection and allure evoke by connotation: association Botticelli’s sublime Venuses that had not yet been hung in the Uffizi, but that extended the The name Venice has been variously accounted for; but I believe our ordinary people in England are nearest to the Florentine tour to the Medici villas in the Castello in right, who call it Venus in their common discourse; as that the Tuscan countryside (Fig. 13). Although all the goddess was, like her best beloved seat of residence, born of Venuses of the Royal Gallery properly inspired awe the sea’s light froth according to old fables, and partook of and devotion from eighteenth-century art connois- her native element, the gay and gentle, not rough and bois- seurs, it was before the Venus de’ Medici that Grand terous qualities.76 Tourists were expected to worship as at the altar of Yet, Venice was not the only stop on the Grand Tour the pre-eminent emblem of art itself. Indeed, the

intimately associated with the goddess of profane and Encyclopédie included an illustrated entry with stere- Downloaded from sacred love. Florence under Medici rule and after- ometric measurements to prove the perfect propor- ward in the context of the Medici art collections also tionality of the Venus de’ Medici.78 identified itself by the myth of Venus. In her im- The commanding international allure of the Medici portant study of the historic association dating to the Venuses must be seen as having an influence on the

Middle Ages of Venus with Florence, Rebekah Compton conception and creation of the anatomical Venus. We http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ has shown in particular how the House of Medici have already seen that a wax copy of the Venus de’ ‘appropriated the goddess’ as a defining symbol ‘of Medici, itself, loomed authoritatively in the anatom- the peace and prosperity’ of their reign.77 Under Cosimo ical rooms at the opening of the Royal Museum. I in the sixteenth century, Florence was, in fact, rede- Fontana and his artistic collaborators no doubt sought fined as Venus-Fiorenza and works of art in the Medici to drape their anatomical Venus in the mantle of collection powerfully reinforced the marriage of these aesthetic perfection and near universal acclaim of the two myths. From the Venus Anadyomene fountain at Medici Venuses on the other side of the Arno and the Medici Villa at Castello just outside of Florence to thereby to extend the Florentine Venus itinerary to by guest on June 6, 2012 Botticelli’s Venus anthology: Venus and Mars, Prima- the halls of the Royal Museum. Numerous grand vera, and the Birth of Venus, the family and the golden- tourists, in fact, made that crossing from the artistic to haired goddess formed a single indissoluble image of the anatomical Venuses. I would argue, however, splendid fecundity. The magnificence and the power that the anatomical Venus did not merely represent of patronage of the Medici dynasty continued to adherence to an aesthetic archetype, but was in fact a captivate visitors to Florence even after there were no modern challenge to the enduring cultural legacy of more Medici to claim the Tuscan throne. During the the Medici. eighteenth century under Peter Leopold’s reign, the The anatomical Venus demonstrated a novel Medici Venuses remained, in fact, a principal organ- perfection and proportionality that went beyond izing theme of the Florentine Grand Tour, which her outward form to the depths of her viscera. First culminated in the Tribune of the Royal Gallery of envisioned intact, as an extra life-like Venus, recum- the Uffizi. bent on an actual silk bed, with polished skin, glass As captured in the iconic painting of the Tribuna of eyes lost in a voluptuous trance, a pearl necklace, and the Uffizi by the German neoclassical painter Johann flowing human hair, her breastplate was, in her second Zoffany in 1773 (Fig. 12), two years before the open- stage of viewing, removed to reveal the regular straight ing of Peter Leopold’s Royal Museum, a horde of lines and angles of the thoracic and anatomical walls famous milords crowd inside the octagonal room to and surface musculature, and the neat mound of admire the congestion of classical and Renaissance serpentine mammary glands of the left breast. In the masterworks from the Medici collection. Prominently third revelation, the left breast was detached and juxtaposed at centre-right and the subject of intense could be held in hand. The fourth view exposed the study by the British aficionados are two of the most thick petalled lobes of the lungs and the anterior

15 REBECCA MESSBARGER Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on June 6, 2012 Fig. 12. Johann Zoffany, The Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1773. The Royal Collection © 2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. surface of the heart gracefully folded within the thor- classical aesthetics and empirical anatomy, a more acic cavity, as well as the omentum covering the perfect mix of bella e utile, rendered the anatomical organs of the lower abdomen. In the fifth viewing, the body not only pleasing but practically instructive to lungs and omentum were removed to reveal the fruit the viewing public and served thereby to satisfy and vessels of the heart as well as the ordered mass the ultimate Enlightenment objective of the public of intestines in the abdominal cavity. Next, the intes- good. tinal tract was extracted to show the colourful and The anatomical excavation of the wax Venus, as tidy contents of the lower abdomen: the liver, conceived by her creators, in contrast to archeological stomach, duodenum, symmetrical kidneys, uterus excavations of classical Venus statuary, would bring with ovaries and abdominal aorta. In the final, most to light more substantive truths than the ‘Beautiful profound vision, select organs were opened to show Idea’. The reiterated uncovering and disassembly of the their internal structures and contents: the heart, the parts of the anatomical figure presumes a corresponding stomach and duodenum, and the uterus, in which reconfiguration and reassembly and the unequivocal nestled a perfect curled up foetus.79 knowledge that results. To take apart and put back The layered and latticed wax anatomical Venus together, to analyze and synthesize, is to know. To do thus surpassed her older sisters in marble and oil- so with the human body is to know in practical and paint both for the systematic complexity of her form substantive terms oneself and one’s place in an or- and for the practical lessons in the physics of the derly physical universe. Recalling the publicity for the human body she served to impart. The marriage of opening of the Museum, it was through this empirical

16 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/

Fig. 13. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, tempera on canvas, 1486, post restoration. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY. encounter with nature that even unschooled Tuscan his life because of chronic illnesses suffered from dissect- citizens would become more learned and happier as a ing innumerable putrefying cadavers and working by guest on June 6, 2012 result.80 The museum visitor who looked upon the endless hours. This gruelling work also brought whole and stratified anatomical Venus would thus important fruits as well, however, because, ‘the wax acquire an understanding of far greater use to the models made by me, I will not deny, hold the greatest individual and the Enlightenment polity than the importance for the science of anatomy.’ Yet, it was most fervent scrutiny, extensive stereometric ap- his commitment to creating an anatomical collection praisal, and intense aesthetic pleasure of the Venus supremely useful and transparently comprehensible de’ Medici. for every Tuscan, that, he went on to say, eventually led him to turn away from wax and to create instead composite anatomical figures from wood of all the parts Inadequate public utility of the head, the heart, the ear, and the entire male and At the end of his scientific career, Felice Fontana wrote female bodies: a very lengthy impassioned apologia for the goals he The waxworks are many parts or members dislocated strove to realize as director of the Royal Museum. The from the human body, which do not form a whole, nor overriding and most daunting principle he claimed to can they, and which do not convey the idea of the en- follow in the development of the Museum and each of its tirety, nor do they illustrate the relationships, the sites collections, but especially the anatomical collection, was and points of attachment between [the parts] and with the the prevailing principle of Peter Leopold’s Enlighten- body as a whole. The wax models are, therefore, the ment regime: public utility. Fontana’s devotion to wheels and mechanisms of a watch dismantled, parti- tioned, divided, displaced, that will never convey the per- the public utility of the anatomical wax collection, he fect idea of a whole watch, its uses, its relative continuity, recounted, ‘was always an unfortunate passion for me, as how one piece impacts another, and therefore of the it brought me the harshest struggles’, nearly costing him mechanism itself . . .81

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Not even the anatomical wax Venus, or the male figure Acknowledgements capable of disassembly that Fontana cast in wax for the I am grateful for the careful reading and suggestions of the anonymous University of Pavia, could adequately convey the rela- reviewer. Members of the Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary tional structure of the body part to the whole, the ana- Salon at Washington University and Anna Maerker provided valuable tomical structure to its function, or the organic human commentary on an early draft of the paper. body itself. The Venus may have represented a novel intersection of art and science, wherein art served to Notes and references facilitate scientific learning, a modern revision of docere, delectare and movere, but for Fontana ultim- 1 It was inaugurated on 22 February 1775. ately the Venus was inadequate to the mission of 2 It is not known exactly when the Venus was conceived and sculpted, as records for the earliest years of the Museum are public utility. With his wooden models, especially the incomplete. Although numerous documents after 1780 whole body figures, not only did Fontana sacrifice a refer to the ‘reclining anatomical statue, called the Venus,’ classical aesthetic but he abandoned a naturalistic (‘la statua anatomica giacente, detto la Venere’), one document in particular provides helpful details as to its origins. Assistant representation of the human body, for which wax had to the director, Giuseppe Fabbroni, who had been at Felice been essential. Instead, he created the most inter- Fontana’s side from 1773, provides an informed reconstruction Downloaded from active, three-dimensional anatomical puzzle ever con- of the story of the decomposable Venus and that of subsequent copies: ‘The modeller Giuseppe Ferrini created in wax circa ceived, comprised of more than 2,000 parts of the 1780 a reclining female statue that provided satisfaction to human body in a solid durable wood that everyone the curious by being able to be dismantled part by part to could take apart and put back together over and over demonstrate successively the contents of the two cavities, the chest and lower abdomen, in nearly that same order as one again. This unguided hands-on analysis and synthesis can perform with an anatomical knife on a human cadaver. http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ translated, he averred, into the surest form of know- A copy was made of it, and also an imitation afterward, for the ledge, better even than human dissection itself: Royal Museum. The first was given by the Signor Director to Signor Guemes, undoubtedly with permission of the Sovereign. To take apart all of man, piece by piece, and to put him back Another copy of the same statue was made for the Imperial together as he was before, is the easiest kind of study and Court of Vienna, another smaller one was sent to the Royal surely the most useful for understanding that most composite Court of Spain, and the one that remained at the Royal Museum was requested by the Signor Director Fontana in machine of the human body. And all this can be done in hours order to make another copy for the so-called French works, with the wooden anatomy, and could never be done with the and it is still in his house.’ Museo Galileo, Fondo Fabbroni II, anatomy in wax. Much less would this be possible with a 16, doc. 4, 4 April 1794, p. 209 r-v. Unless otherwise indicated, by guest on June 6, 2012 cadaver in which, when one wants to examine whatever part these and all translations are mine. or organ, we are compelled to separate and extract all those 3 Katharine Park, Secrets of Women. Gender, Generation, and the parts that cover it, or are connected or near to it, and for which Origins of Human Dissection (New York, 2006), p. 221. 82 we lose a sense of the relationships [of the parts of the body]. 4 ‘dal grave magistrato e dalla vivace donzella, e dagli’intelletti incalliti e pervenuti e dalle menti tenere e nuove.’ Il Caffe, Fontana’s endeavour to supplant the decomposable 1764-1766, ed. Gianni Francioni and Sergio Romagnoli (Turin, Venus, which so captivated visitors to the Museum 1993), p. 5. and was reproduced for numerous anatomy museums 5 On restrictions governing the viewing public of the Public throughout Europe, with his wooden anatomies may, Anatomy during the Renaissance, see Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body. Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning in fact, be seen as a more radical challenge to Medici (Chicago, 1999), pp. 83-5. cultural authority and potent sign of the birth of a new 6 Anna Florida, Forestieri in galleria. Visitatori, direttori e custodi egalitarian scientific Renaissance in Florence in the agli Uffizi dal 1769 al 1785 (Florence, 2007), p. 17. eighteenth century. For the pleasure of learning via 7 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge the wooden anatomy was no longer mediated or (New York, 1992), p. 105. legitimized by means of canonical art. The delight On the Renaissance collector, Findlen also observes: ‘Through the possession of objects, one physically acquired knowledge, and satisfaction of learning were produced by the act and through their display, one symbolically acquired the honor of learning itself. and reputation that all men of learning cultivate.’ Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA, 1994), p. 3. Address for correspondence 8 Marta Cavazza, Settecento inquieto. Alle origini dell’Istituto delle Rebecca Messbarger, 7401 Cromwell Drive, St Louis, MO 63105, Scienze di Bologna (Bologna, 1990), p. 31. U.S.A. 9 ‘penetra nelle viscere della terra, e ne specola le mirabili [email protected] produzioni, che la entro si operano; si solleva fino a’ cieli

18 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY

e tenta di conoscere i movimenti degli astri, e di osservare Europe, ed. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan and l’ordine, e la regolarità, che lassuso regna; si volge all’acque, Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago, 1986), p. 176. ed agli animali, che in esse guizzano, ed a meraviglia ne spiega 17 Rebekah Compton, ‘A Cultural Icon: The Currency of Venus in i prodigiosi effetti che vi occorrono.’ Diamante Medaglia Eighteenth-Century Florence’, Ph.D. dissertation, University Faini, ‘Quali studi convengono alle donne’, in Versi e prose con of California, Berkeley, 2009. alti componimenti di diversi autori e colla vita dell’autrice, ed. Giuseppe Pontara (Salò, 1774), p. 174. 18 Cited in Franco Valsecchi, L’assolutismo Illuminato in Austria e Lombardia, vol. I (Bologna, 1931), p. 142. 10 As I will discuss at greater length later in this essay, the Venus, 19 The crown appears in state and domestic portraits of Maria along with all of the anatomical figures in the museum, formed Theresa and Frances Joseph and their children, but is not linked part of the physics display. officially to any of the territories they ruled, and is quite different 11 Visitors to the Museum did not, as a rule, disassemble the from the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. It served as an Venus or handle any other model themselves, but watched explicit symbol of the reign of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. as assigned modellers gave demonstrations. The modellers’ 20 On Peter Leopold’s reforms see, Dino Carpanetto and work-logs recount how they were called on to demonstrate the Giuseppe Ricuperati, Italy in the Age of Reason 1685-1789 anatomy models for eminent guests to the museum. Although (New York, 1987), pp. 209-22; Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, 1798 logs for a number of years are missing, in the logbook for , ‘Hapsburg Italy in the Age of Reform’, ed. Carlo Capra, the modeller Francesco Calenzoli, ends his account saying Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10 no. 2 (2005), pp. 218-33; of the decomposable model created during the mid 1780s in Adam Wandruszka, Pietro Leopoldo. Un grande riformatore wood, ‘I spent time on those occasions that the engraver was (Florence, 1968). Downloaded from absent putting together and taking apart the Great Statue when foreigners would come to see it; and this occurred during 21 Valentino Baldacci (ed.), Le riforme di Pietro Leopoldo e la my lunch hour.’ The Specola Museum in Florence, Giornale nascita della Toscana moderna (Florence, 2000), pp. 21-36. dei modellatori, 1797-98, fol. 38. 22 Wandruszka, op. cit. (note 20), p. 536. 12 Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body. Anatomical Ritual and 23 The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, the Archduke’s brother,

Renaissance Learning, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne blocked this most sweeping reform.Valentino Baldacci, ‘Pietro http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ C. Tedeschi (Chicago, 1999), pp. 92-115; Park, op. cit. (note Leopoldo un grande riformatore’, in Le riforme di Pietro 3), pp. 207-59. Leopoldo, op. cit. (note 21), pp. 23-4. 13 Park, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 255-65. 24 Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, ‘Dalla riforma municipale al progetto di 14 Benedict’s support of anatomical science has been the subject Costituzione’, in Le riforme di Pietro Leopoldo, op. cit. (note of numerous studies. Of particular relevance are the following: 21), pp. 51-2. G. G. Bolletti, Dell’origine e de’ progressi dell’Istituto delle 25 The Archduke was an avid chemist and amateur physicist: Scienze di Bologna (1751), reprinted, edited and with notes by Wandruszka, op. cit. (note 20), p. 184; La casa di Salomone M. Bortolotti (Bologna, 1987); G. Martinotti, Prospero a Firenze. L’Imperiale e Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale Lambertini (Benedetto XIV) e lo studio dell’anatomia in Bologna (1755-1801) (Florence, 2002), p. 63. Contardi discusses at (Bologna, 1911); Franco Ruggeri, ‘Il Museo dell’Istituto di length what he calls the ‘Institutionalization of the Experiment,’ by guest on June 6, 2012 Anatomia Umana Normale’, in I luoghi del conoscere. I laboratori with the founding of Peter Leopold’s museum, in chapter 2 of storici e i musei dell’Università di Bologna, ed. Amilcare Pizzi the same book, pp. 55-120. (Bologna, 1988); Annarita Angelini (ed.), L’Istituto delle 26 According to Baldacci, op. cit. (note 23), p. 26, it was in fact Sciencze di Bologna, vol. III of Anatomie accademiche (Bologna, ‘Galilean in form’. See Anna Maerker on the physiocratic 1993); Walter Tega, ed. I commentari dell’Accademia delle Scienze doctrine of governance according to laws of natural order that di Bologna, vol. I of Anatomie accademiche (Bologna, 1986); defined the reform programme of Peter Leopold: A. Maerker, Rebecca Messbarger, ‘Waxing poetic: Anna Morandi Manzolini’s Model Experts. Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and anatomical sculptures’, Configurations 9 (2001), pp. 65-97; Vienna, 1775-1815 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 29-41. Rebecca Messbarger, The Lady Anatomist. The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (Chicago, 2010); Lucia Dacome, 27 Peter Leopold, Relazione sul Governo della Toscana, vol. I, ed. ‘“Un certo e quasi incredibile piacere”: cera e anatomia nel A. Salvestrini (Florence, 1969), p. 236. Settecento’, Intersezionei: Rivista di storia delle idee 25 (2005), 28 Anna Maerker has discussed the Royal Museum of Physics and pp. 415-36; Giovanna Ferrari, ‘Public anatomy lessons and Natural History as cornerstone of Peter Leopold’s programme the Carnival: the anatomy theater of Bologna’, Past and Present to turn Tuscan subjects into enlightened citizens in Model 117 (1987), pp. 50-106. Experts, op. cit. (note 26), p. 4. 15 8 January 1737: ‘On the Anatomy to be done in public schools’ 29 The Palazzo Torrigiani was bought in 1772 for the Museum. (‘Sopra la Notomia da farsi nelle pubbliche scuole’). This 30 Wandruszka, op. cit. (note 20), p. 458. document, which issued from the palace of the Archbishop in the vernacular, was republished numerous times during 31 See, for example, Wandruszka, op. cit. (note 20), p. 343; the course of the century and was translated into Latin Peter Knoefel, Felice Fontana. Life and Works (Trento, 1984), and Spanish: see Martinotti, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 4-5. p. 64; and Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries On Benedict’s support of anatomical science, see Rebecca (Chicago, 1973), pp. 17, 426. Messbarger, ‘The Pope’s anatomy museum’, chapter 1 of The 32 Lines from W. Parson, ‘Epistle to the Marquis Ippolito Lady Anatomist, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 20-51. Pindemonte at Verona’, cited in Brian Moloney, ‘The Della 16 Elizabeth Cropper, ‘The beauty of woman: problems in Cruscan poets, the “Florence Miscellany” and the Leopoldine the rhetoric of Renaissance portraiture’, in Re-writing the reforms’, Modern Language Review 60 no. 1 (1965), pp. 48-57. Renaissance. Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern 33 Cochrane, op. cit. (note 31), p. 426.

19 REBECCA MESSBARGER

34 Peter Leopold privileged explicitly in his art institutions the 54 On the history and authority of this figure, see Francis Haskell theories of Winkelmann and Mengs. and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical 35 Miriam Fileti Mazza and Bruna Tomasello, ‘Da Antonio Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven and London, 1982), pp. 240-41. Cocchi a Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni: pensiero e prassi in 55 Richard Nicolas Cochin, Voyage d’Italia, vol. II (Paris, 1753), Galleria’, in La Galleria rinnovata e accresciuta: Gli Uffizi nella p. 45. prima epoca lorenese (Florence, 2008), p. 23. 56 In 1766, Peter Leopold appointed the famed author and natural 36 I am indebted to the theory of sacra and spolia of Bruce philosopher Felice Fontana (1730-1805) ‘Physicist of his Redford in Venice and the Grand Tour (New Haven, CT, Royal Person’, professor of physics at the University of Pisa, 1996), pp. 15-17. and supervisor of the offices of physics machines. Beginning 37 Hooper-Greenhill, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 23-77. with of the Medici scientific collections in the Mathematics Room of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, it was Fontana’s job 38 E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form. Studies in the Art of the to build and supervise an ideal collection of scientific machines Renaissance, vol. I (Oxford, 1985), pp. 30-55. and natural artefacts for a new public museum. On Fontana’s 39 Archivio di Galleria degli Uffizi, filza 13, n. 78, ‘Motuproprio work as director see the special issue of Nuncius devoted to di Pietro Leopoldo, 5 agosto 1780.’ ‘Felice Fontana and his collections’, Nuncius 21 no. 2 (2006), 40 N. N., Saggio del Real Gabinetto di Fisica e di Storia Naturale pp. 247-368. di Firenze (Rome, 1775), p. 2. 57 See note 40. 41 Ibid. 58 Paola Bertucci, ‘Public utility and spectacular display: the Downloaded from 42 Ibid., p. 3. Physics Cabinet of the Royal Museum in Florence (1775)’, Nuncius 21 no. 2 (2006), p. 331. 43 Ferdinando Paoletti, Estratto di’ Pensieri sopra l’agricoltura (Milan, 1804), pp. 328-9. 59 Maerker discusses this in op. cit. (note 26), pp. 83-5, 120. 44 Simone Contardi, La casa di Salomone a Firenze. L’Imperiale e 60 Biblioteca Rosminiana, Rovereto. Manoscritti di Felice Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale (1775-1801) (Florence, Fontana, faldone 28.B.110, cc. 7r-7v, cited by Contardi, op. 2002), p. 75. cit. (note 44), p. 167. http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ 45 Maerker, op. cit. (note 26), p. 5. 61 Contardi, op. cit. (note 44), p. 103. 46 Cochrane, op. cit. (note 31), pp. 367-70, 468-77. 62 The locomotor apparatus was of special importance for training artists in anatomical design and studies of the 47 Cited by Antonio Natali in Florida, op. cit. (note 6), p. 11. nude. 48 On the demographics of the gallery visitors, see Florida, op. 63 On Hallerian irritability, see Hubert Stienke, Irritating cit. (note 6), and on the demographics of the Museum visitors, Experiments. Haller’s Concept and the European Controversy on see Renato Mazzolini, ‘Visitors to Florence’s R. Museum of Irritability and Sensibility, 1750-90 (Amsterdam, 2005). Physics and Natural History from September 1784 to October 1785’, Nuncius 2 (2006), pp. 337-48; and on women’s presence 64 The list of twenty-five anatomical ‘Books kept in the room where see, Maerker, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 118-48. the waxes are made’, included, among others, Marcello Malpighi, Biblioteca Anatomica; Adriaan van den Spiegel, Anatomia; by guest on June 6, 2012 49 See note 40. Johann Gottfried Zinn, Descriptio Anatomica Oculi Humani; 50 Although published anonymously, it is widely assumed by Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis historians that Fontana wrote the ‘Saggio’ publicizing the humani ; three books by Albrecht von Haller; G. B. Morgagni, museum’s opening. Epistolae Anatomicae Duodeviginti; Bartolomeo Eustachi, Tabulae 51 Florence State Archive. Inventario del Real Gabinetto [di fisica Anatomicae; Govert Bidloo, Anatomia Humani Corporis. Museo e storia naturale], vol. I, Filza 5252, cc. 72 e 70. My thanks to Galileo Filza di Negozzi a tutto l’Anno 1789, ‘Fogli concernenti le Patrizia Ruffo for her help in locating this document. Statue Anotomiche [sic]’, fol. 67. 52 The Venus de’ Medici replica has been confused by some 65 Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum historians with the decomposable Venus, made later. See, corporis humani, (Lugduni Batavorum, 1747). for example, Francesco Paolo De Ceglia, ‘Rotten corpses, 66 Inventario del Reale Gabinetto di Fisica e Storia Naturale a disembowelled woman, a flayed man. Images of the body (1776), vol. I, filza 5252, pp. 70-72, refers to the wax figure from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century. ‘representing the muscular statue of Albinus’. Florentine wax models in the first-hand accounts of visitors’, 67 The number of historians who reiterate this erroneous claim Perspectives on Science 14 no. 4 (2006), pp. 417-56. Art historians is too great to identify them individually. I would suggest that at the Uffizi with whom I conferred, conjectured that the this is a powerful example of the influence on perception of figures, which were undoubtedly placed in storage, may be to received knowledge. this day uncatalogued in the Bargello, or may have been sent to one of the Medici villas in the Tuscan countryside. A hint as to 68 The illustrations in Bidloo and Cowper, for example, commonly their possible whereabouts is found in a document by Giovanni show the lifeless dissected body. Fabbroni of 21 January 1794: ‘two heads, one of the Venus 69 On the manner of exhibiting the reproductive female body at de’ Medici and the other of the Apollo Belvedere with their the Royal Museum, see Lyle Massey’s ‘On waxes and wombs: respective display cases, not being appropriate for the Museum eighteenth-century representations of the gravid uterus’, in as they have nothing to do with Natural History, may be used Ephemeral Bodies. Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. by the Royal Wardrobe as ornaments for some imperial villa or Roberta Panzanelli (Los Angeles, 2008), pp. 83-105. palace.’ Museo Galileo, Real Museo, Filza di Negozi, 1794. 70 On Fontana’s academic life and ties in Bologna, see Contardi, 53 J. J. Winkelmann, The History of Ancient Art, vol. II, trans. op. cit. (note 44), pp. 77-83; and Knoefel, op. cit. (note 31), Giles Henry Lodge (Boston, 1849), pp. 92-3. pp. 11-17.

20 THE RE- BIRTH OF VENUS IN FLORENCE’ S ROYAL MUSEUM OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY

71 On Morandi, see Messbarger, op. cit. [The Lady Anatomist] 76 Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections Made in the (note 14). Course of a Journey Through France, Italy and Germany, vol. 1 72 Fontana’s chief modellers Giuseppe Ferrini and Clemente (London, 1789), p. 89. Susini no doubt had a profound influence on the artistic 77 Compton, op. cit. (note 17). representation of the anatomical bodies of the Museum. As a 78 Florida, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 68-70. recent graduate of the Florentine Academy of Art, Susini had been involved, in fact, in the renewal of the Uffizi Gallery. I 79 For images and an inventory of the layered parts of the Venus, am currently writing an article-length biography of this artist. see, Encyclopaedia Anatomica (London, 1999), pp. 108-15. 73 Saggio, cited in Contardi, op. cit. (note 44), p. 114. 80 See note 40. 74 Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace, Spectacular Bodies. The 81 Florence State Archive. Imperiale Real Corte, 360, Memoria di Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now Cav. Fontana in sua giustificazione, P. XLI. N. 10, I. F. N. 2d. 284, (Berkeley, CA, 2000), p. 61. fol. 25. 75 See Bruce Redford, Venice and the Grand Tour (New Haven, 1996). 82 Ibid. Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on June 6, 2012

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