Читать книгу The Anatomical Venus - Joanna Ebenstein - Страница 22

(24) preVious owards the end of the eighteenth century, in a wax workshop in page 20 Florence, a life-sized, anatomically correct, dissectible goddess of Detail of a wax model coloured wax was created. Artist and master ceroplastician Clemente in the ninth month of pregnancy. From the Susini (1754–1814) took the idealized feminine beauty for which Italian workshop of Gustav artists had long been renowned in an ambitious new direction, and to Zeiller, Berlin, hyper-realistic lengths. The result—an Anatomical Venus known as the ‘Medici Germany (c. 1880). Venus’ or the ‘Demountable Venus’—is a masterwork of human ingenuity; the pages 22–23 product of a mystic marriage between art, science, and metaphysics. The Medici Venus The Medici Venus swoons langorously, apparently in the full flush of health, (1780–82), displayed on a silk cushion in a casket offine wood and Venetian glass. She is designed intact and dissected. fig. 6 fig. 7 fig. 6 Wax self-portrait of Clemente Susini (1754–1814), who oversaw the creation of the finest wax models at La Specola. fig. 7 Marble bust offelice Fontana (1730–1805), natural philosopher and director of the museum and wax workshop at La Specola. Fontana strictly monitored his employees and resented state supervision, refusing to keep proper records. to charm in every detail: her glistening glass eyes are rimmed with real eye lashes, her bared throat is bound by a string of pearls, and she boasts a lustrous cascade of human hair. Seemingly alive but for her stillness and supernatural perfection, if you lift off her breastplate you will find that she is completely dissectible into seven layers, each revealing perfectly rendered, anatomically accurate organs. At the final remove—despite the figure betraying no outward signs of pregnancy—you will find a perfect, tranquil fetus curled in her womb: the raison d’être of the female body‚ at the the time. To the modern eye, the Medici Venus is a perplexing object‚ one that chal lenges conventions of scientific visualization and explodes neat categorical divides between art and science, entertainment and education. In her own day, she was considered the ideal tool to teach anatomy to a general public, alleviat ing the need to resort to actual cadavers; indeed, she was so highly regarded by anatomists that copies were commissioned for a variety of museums and teaching collections around Europe. The Medici Venus was a perfect embodi ment of the Enlightenment values of her time, in which human anatomy was understood as a reflection of the world and the pinnacle of divine knowledge, and in which to know the human body was to know the mind of God. Although AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 24 12/01/2016 12:14 chapter one[1]