Читать книгу The Anatomical Venus - Joanna Ebenstein - Страница 12

(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