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(33) pleasurable way, without need of lecturer or text. By consolidating private collections with customized wax models under one roof and making them avail able free of charge—albeit with separate opening hours for the lower classes, ‘provided they were cleanly clothed’—Leopold II defined his own ‘enlightened absolutist’ idealism. His philosophy was in stark contrast to that of his sister, Marie Antoinette (1755–93), who had married the French king Louis XVI (1754– 93). In France, not long after La Specola’s Medici Venus was crafted, Marie Tussaud (1761–1850) was making wax models of the most famous heads rolling from the guillotine during the French Revolution. From 1771 to 1893, Fontana’s wax workshop produced more than 2,500 wax models for La Specola and a variety of other museums, including life-sized bodies and small anatomical details. A full set of 1,192 wax models was commis sioned by Leopold II’s brother, Emperor Joseph II (1741–90), and transported fig. 16 Engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, Florence (1744). The bodies that served as models for La Specola’s waxes were sourced here. fig. 16 over the Alps to Vienna on the backs of mules and labourers. Intended for use in training military surgeons at the Josephinum, the medico-surgical academy founded by Joseph II in 1785, the models were dismissed by some as expensive, frivolous toys despite their anatomical accuracy, perhaps because the Viennese middle class trusted neither aristocratic opulence nor popular pleasures. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) also ordered forty cases, which unfortunately never arrived in Paris, ending up instead in Montpellier, France, where they can still be seen at the Faculty of Medicine’s anatomical museum. Today, Anatomical Venuses created at La Specola’s workshop can be viewed at museums in Budapest, Pavia, Bologna, and London. A large collection of exquisite waxes still on display AV_00966_pre-pdf layout_001_215.indd 33 12/01/2016 12:14 THE BIRTH OF THE anaTOmIcal VEnUS[1]