Fugitive pieces
By Rupert Thomson
How the macabre works of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, a mysterious 17th-century Sicilian wax modeller, inspired Rupert Thomson’s new novel ‘Secrecy’
...Driving back to England two months later, I stopped in Florence. Opened in 1775, La Specola is the oldest scientific museum in Europe, and the first 24 rooms are filled with extraordinary zoological specimens. There is a 17th-century hippopotamus that the Grand Duke used to keep in the Boboli Gardens. For some reason, the taxidermist had given the hippopotamus what appeared to be the feet of a dog. There is also a manatee, and a basilisk in a jar. In the two months since the birth of my daughter I’d had little sleep, and I was so deeply tired that I felt at times as if I were hallucinating. I hurried on, eager to see the waxes Jan had spoken of. All I remember from that day is walking into a room that was dominated by three hip-high glass cases. Each case contained a life-size woman made of wax. They were naked except for delicate pearl necklaces, and their heads rested on satin pillows. They had real human hair, and eyes of coloured Venetian glass. Their skin, a sallow golden-yellow, gleamed as if they had just broken out in a light sweat. Though I knew nothing of their provenance or their purpose, they seemed distinctly ambiguous, walking a fine line between the medical and the erotic. I came away from La Specola fascinated by wax as a medium; the way it mimicked human flesh – in his Natural History, Pliny calls it “extreme resemblance” – was uncanny, disquieting.
Towards the end of that year, I went to the Spectacular Bodies exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London. I still have the page of scribbled notes I made that day. Though I recorded the names of several wax artists – among them Joseph Towne, Anna Morandi, Petrus Koning and Clemente Susini (who had made the three women in La Specola) – almost a quarter of my notes related to Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, whose “Dissection of a Head” was on display, and who was described in the catalogue as an “eccentric Sicilian wax-modeller”. I learnt that several of Zumbo’s most important works were kept in La Specola, and felt stupid for not having noticed them in March. As I left the Hayward, I resolved to learn more.
I quickly discovered that Zumbo is perhaps most celebrated for his plague pieces, which are wooden cabinets – or teatrini – that are filled with the macabre yet oddly tactile bodies of the dead and dying. When I first saw them, as photographs, I was reminded of nativities – though their subject is obviously human not divine, death not birth. Zumbo’s figures sprawl on a rubble of broken tombs and scattered bones, and their flesh is green, yellow, brown or black, depending on the degree of decomposition. The detail is intricate, obsessive – rats tug at entrails, eyeballs are festooned with maggots – so much so that art historians suspect Zumbo of using a magnifying glass when he was modelling; there is a secret, hidden element to the work, just as there was in society, knowledge being the prerogative of the few in those pre-Enlightenment days. Each tableau Zumbo made contrives to be both rich and desolate, and each has a painted backdrop – one of his innovations – which affords the dying a “view” of the landscape beyond the grotto, a last glimpse of the world they are about to leave. Though most of the figures would fit on the palm of your hand, they look more like individuals than specimens, and have an unnerving flamboyance or sensuality that borders on exhibitionism.Jorge Luis Borges once said that great art always has a certain ambiguity about it. Here, in that case, was great art. Here, also, was a conundrum. And, as a writer, that is precisely where a novel begins for me. Something seems to open out in front of me, something I feel driven to explore, and the only tools I have are sentence...
... By the late 17th century, the glories of the Renaissance were long gone. Florence had entered a profound economic slump – it was an age of austerity, not unlike our own – and the mood was neurotic, disapproving and suspicious. In order to survive, you had to dissimulate, cultivating a gap between your thoughts and actions. During his travels Zumbo may have come to see himself as an outsider but in Florence he was definitely a foreigner as well, and the graphic, gruesome nature of his plague pieces, which teetered on the brink of horror, would also have marked him out as an oddity. To Cosimo III, famously morbid, Zumbo’s work spoke of the transience of life – it was cautionary, meditative – but in centuries to come, opinions would differ wildly. Predictably, perhaps, it appealed to both Lord Byron and the Marquis de Sade. De Sade’s description of the plague pieces – their “fearful truth”, as he put it – was used in Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded, a context that mingled desire, cruelty and death. “So powerful is the impression produced by this masterpiece,” de Sade wrote, “that even as you gaze at it your other senses are played upon; moans audible, you wrinkle your nose as if you could detect the evil odours of mortality.” But Herman Melville, who mentioned Zumbo’s work in Journal up the Straits some 50 years later, took a different view: “A moralist, this Sicilian,” was his measured response. To this day, however, a sense of unease remains.
And what of Zumbo’s private life? The devil doesn’t appear in Zumbo’s work, and he makes no reference to salvation or paradise. His focus is specifically terrestrial. For Zumbo, the threat is not sin, but time. His anatomical pieces were forensic but they were also, quite clearly, sensual – or, as the art historian Roberta Panzanelli puts it, “love-letters to life itself”...Excerpt and images from The Financial Times article "Fugitive Pieces;" You can read the entire piece by clicking here. The top four photos are drawn from the piece, and were taken by Nick Ballon, while the bottom image was sourced on the from Musesplorando website; Full captions follow, top to bottom. You can read The Guardian's review of the novel by clicking here. You can find out more--and order a copy of the book--by clicking here,.
The Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze is a happy example of a newly-renovated, early anatomical collection that has been well loved and cared for. The waxes, osteological preparations and wet specimens are all housed in their original, highly ornamental wood and glass display cases, making the place seem more like a treasury than a didactic collection of pain, healing and preserved suffering. Indeed some of the small, ornately jarred specimens, with their delicately handwritten labels are nearly indistinguishable from sacred relics.
The history of this collection goes back to 1824, with the founding of the Medical Society in Florence. It was always intended as a teaching tool for the medical students at the university, and the wax models here are some of the most beautiful examples of the ceroplast's art. The casts were individually commissioned by the anatomy professors and executed by some of the most renowned wax workers of Florence. The result is a 3D catalogue of benign and cancerous tumors, burns, venereal infections, abnormal growths and congenital birth defects, all rendered with the greatest loving care and verisimilitude. The full-sized wax leper could be a saint in any church, his suffering as profound as any wax Christ.
Our guide Gabriella Nesi (2nd image, left; a professor of pathology who has taken the museum under her wing) was particularly eager to point out the models of before-and-after facial reconstructive surgeries, which demonstrated the progress of 19th century plastic surgery by recording not only the sutures and healing wound sites, but the more subtle details like post-surgical stubble on a shaved head. The results are strangely intimate, and we were surprised to learn that many of these models were not only cast from actual patients, but that the museum still has most of the case histories. It is rare to know the story behind any given wax medical model - once a thing has a name, it all becomes unavoidably real.
Although the wax models themselves are breathtaking, it was the presentation of some of the smaller waxes, housed in delicate paper and glass boxes, that drew our attention. These preparations, although clearly intended for a scientific audience, utilize the decorative, visual language of spiritual offerings. Indeed, many of the wax modelers of the 19th century functioned in both the religious and the didactic realm, and the result is a transcendent form of visual art that straddles the spiritual and the scientific, lending the anatomy itself an air of great mystery.
Wax model of a decomposing body in a walnut coffin, Italy, 1774-1800
The body in this wooden coffin is in a severe state of decomposition. It may have had two purposes: as ‘memento mori’, a reminder of death, or as a teaching aid. The figure is surrounded by three frogs. Frogs are symbols of rebirth and regeneration because they change so much in their lifetimes. Wax modelling was used in Europe to create religious effigies. From the 1600s, they were also used to teach anatomy. The creation of wax anatomical models, centred in Italy, was based on observing real corpses. The museum known as La Specola, or ‘the observatory’, in Florence was famous for its wax collection.Found in the always delightful Macabre and Beautifully Grotesque Facebook Group.
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| An early blood transfusion from lamb to man, ca 1705. From "Tryals Proposed by Mr. Boyle to Dr. Lower, to be Made by Him, for the Improvement of Transfusing Blood out of One Live Animal into Another," Mr. Boyle |
A Most Unexpected History of Blood Transfusion (1660 - 1820s)
Illustrated lecture with Paul Craddock, The London Consortium
Date: TONIGHT Monday, May 14
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Those living in Britain (who owned a television set) about ten years ago might remember Sean Bean before he became a famous movie star. Apart from his appearance in Sharpe, he starred in a television advertisement for the National Blood Foundation, prompting people in his thick Yorkshire accent to 'do something amazing today'; 'save a life' by giving blood. The foundation's message is still the same, though Sean Bean has moved onto other projects such as Lord of the Rings. In any case, this illustrated lecture is about just that: the transfusion of blood and its many meanings. But it focuses on a much earlier (and stranger) period of transfusion history when saving a life was only one reason to transfuse blood - from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth.You can find out more about all events by clicking here.
The association between blood and life is a very easy one to make and seems to span all cultures and time periods, as does the very idea of swapping blood from one person to another. But what it means to swap one being's blood with another's - and why this might be attempted - has radically changed. It is only very recently, (around the turn of the twentieth century), that blood was transfused in order to purposefully replace lost blood. For the majority of this history, this was most certainly not the case. In the seventeenth century, transfusions of lamb's blood were made to calm mad patients and, in the nineteenth century, blood was transfused in order to restore a portion of an invisible living principle living inside of it. This lecture explores from where these ideas came and the ways in which bits of them might linger in our own ideas of transfusion.
On one last note: Paul Craddock commissioned a medical instrument maker to produce some early nineteenth century transfusion equipment. He hopes to demonstrate them at work if he can get them past customs!
Paul Craddock is currently writing on pre-20th century transplant surgery and transfusion at the London Consortium working under Prof. Steven Connor (University of London) and Prof. Holly Tucker (Vanderbilt University, Nashville). After a brief time studying music and performing arts, living in rural China, and working for the National Health Service, Paul made the switch to cultural and medical history. He has never had a transplant and never received a transfusion - his interest in these procedures come from thinking about generally how we relate to the material world by making bodily transactions. He has lectured around the UK and Europe, and last year he spoke at the Observatory Gallery on skin grafting. Currently based in London, Paul is the Director of London Consortium Television, the audio-visual arm of the London Consortium (www.londonconsortium.tv). He is also the Guests' Secretary for the University of London's Extra Mural Literature Association. In another professional life, he produces films for medical establishments and museum exhibitions.
The Hidden River Expedition: A Re-Exploration of the Post-industrial Wilderness along Philadelphia’s Rivers: An Illustrated Lecture and Film Screening with Allen Crawford (aka Lord Whimsy)
Date: This Friday, May 18
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
In August of 2011, Allen Crawford (aka Lord Whimsy) left his house to embark on a three-day, forty-mile solo kayak trek from Mount Holly, NJ to Bartram's Garden, in West Philadelphia. This May 18th, Crawford will present a video using footage shot from his kayak during this trek. He will also give a slideshow presentation, highlighting the strange history along these rivers he traversed: fugitive slave enclaves, floating churches, Civil-War era submarines, and derelict aircraft carriers all await you. This expedition was a re-exploration of Philadelphia's landscape, and an investigation of how its built and grown environments have affected each other over time. This landscape is not pristine, but it is wild--and perhaps most important, it's new. The "local frontier" exists!
Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy (a.k.a. Victor Allen Crawford III), After twenty long years, has at last achieved his dream: unemployability. He is an artist, designer, author, re-explorer, failed dandy, tin grandee, gentleman trespasser, bushwhacking aesthete, parenthetical naturalist, pseudo-intellectual, and a middle-aged dilettante. Having taken a solemn vow to do as little in life as possible, Whimsy was dismayed one morning to discover that he had accidentally wrote, designed, and illustrated The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One (Bloomsbury 2006), which has been optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. His face and his words have graced the hallowed pages of The New York Times, Interview, Frieze, Vice, Tin House, and Art in America. He and his wife are proprietors of the design and illustration studio Plankton Art Co. Their most notable project to date is the collection of 400 species identification illustrations that are on permanent display at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life. A devoted enthusiast, lower-case adventurer, and explorer of what he calls “the local frontier,” Whimsy spends most of his time among the nooks and margins of the forgotten, the curious, and the speculative that is found beneath, around, and between the everyday. He smells like gusto.
And onward and upwards:
- May 21: “The Secret Life of Mushrooms” — Screening of film about mushroom tourism in Mexico with the film’s producer/director Kathleen Green and interviewer Dan Glass
- May 31: “Powder House” A Film about Jell-O: Screening of this film about this "symbol, multi-faceted and elusive; it’s silly, playful, funereal, American. It’s made from bones." Q and A with the filmmakers
- June 3: Life and Death Mask Making Workshop with Artist Sigrid Sarda *** Must RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com
- June 4: Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant: An illustrated lecture and screening of “lost footage” with Mel Gordon, author of Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant and Grand Guiginol: Theatre of Fear and Terror
- June 24: Anatomical Wax Votive Workshop with Artist Sigrid Sarda ***Must RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com
- June 25: Class: Drawing from the Bestiary: Animal Anatomy of Real and Imagined Creatures: 4-Part Class with Artist Saul Chernick, M.F.A., Rutgers University ***Must RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com
- June 30: Anthropomorphic Insect Shadowbox Workshop: With former AMNH Senior Insect Preparator Daisy Tainton
- June 30: Morbid Anatomy Library Post-Disaster Benefit SAVE THE DATE
- July 13: Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: Illustrated lecture by Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein, followed by afterparty featuring thematic music and specialty cocktails by Friese Undine
EPISODE 09 - WAX - A long standing obsession of mine has always been wax... I am honored to have someone I genuinely consider a true artist as part of our series - Ms. Sigrid Sarda. From our first meeting I knew we'd have a ton of things to talk about. The charmingly perverse Sarda has taught herself the ancient art of sculpting in wax, and it is every bit as creepy and interesting as you might expect. Her home (where we shot the episode) - is LITTERED with her creations. Its a scene out of one of my all time favorite films "Tourist Trap" minus a creepy cross-dressing Chuck Connors. Take a look at the art behind the wax. Its truly a fascinating medium. And Sig is truly a fascinating artist. Stay tuned, as she is working on a maze called Welcome To Hegemony which is sort of a super speed 'haunted' maze which will feature many of her wax friends - HOPEFULLY including the wax figure she is making of yours truly! Enjoy!For more on the series, to see former episodes, or to sign up for the mailing list and thus be alerted to future uploads, visit The Midnight Archive website by clicking here. You can also "like" it on Facebook--and be alerted in this way--by clicking here. You can find out more about the amazing work of Sigrid Sarda by clicking here.
“The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini”You can find out more--and order tickets!--by clicking here. To find out more about Rebecca Messbarger's book The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini, click here.
The 2012 Malloch Circle Lecture and Reception
Date: January 19, 2012
Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Speaker(s): Rebecca Messbarger, PhD, Associate Professor of Italian, Washington University
Location: The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029
The Malloch Circle, a special group of friends who are interested in the history of medicine and support the historical programs at NYAM, is hosting a lecture about Anna Morandi Manzolini, an illustrious 18th century anatomical modeler. This is a special introduction to the Malloch Circle, whose members are invited to dinner events featuring presentations of historical and bibliographic interest, exhibitions of relevant notable rare books, and private behind the scenes tour of the Rare Book Room.
Anna Morandi Manzolini was an illustrious 18th century anatomical modeler who, with her husband, Giovanni Manzolini, held anatomy lessons in their Bologna home. The artistry and accuracy of her wax models made her widely known as a leader in the field, and brought powerful supporters, including the Royal Society of London, Doge Moccenigo of Venice, and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Long forgotten, her story has been disinterred and developed through the research of Dr. Rebecca Messbarger. Professor Messbarger earned her PhD from the University of Chicago. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. She is director of undergraduate studies in Italian, founder and co-convener of the 18th Century Interdisciplinary Salon, and an executive board member of the Society for 18th Century Studies. Her most recent book The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini, examines the details of Morandi’s remarkable life, tracing her intellectual trajectory from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomical wax modeler for the University of Bologna’s famous medical school.
The Friends of the Rare Book Room is a special group of contributors who for sixty years have supported public programs in the history of medicine, the acquisition and cataloging of historical scholarly material, and activities that make the Malloch Rare Book Room a center for scholarship in the history of medicine and public health and for the study of books and printing. The Malloch Circle is composed of special Friends of the Rare Book Room who support this work at a level of $1,000 annually. The Malloch Circle is named for Archibald Malloch, a protege of William Osler, who served as the Academy's Librarian from 1926 to 1949. The continuing support of the Malloch Circle will dramatically improve the library's efforts to enhance its collections through full cataloguing and archival processing, digitization, and conservation treatment. The Malloch Circle meets several times a year for dinner and conversation, with special presentations of bibliographical and historical interest, and for private tours of notable rare book collections.
Registration Information
Cost: $35
Sir Benjamin StoneFound on the Victoria and Albert Museum website. Click on image for larger, more detailed view.
'Westminster Abbey 1896 Wax effigy of King Charles II'
Westminster, London, England
1896
Platinum print
Museum no. E.4176-2000
Made soon after Charles's death in February 1685, this life-size effigy stood over the king's grave for 150 years. It then moved to the Islip Chapel, where it was photographed by Stone, and is now in the Abbey museum. The figure is dressed in the robes of the Order of the Garter, possibly those of the king himself.
For those visiting or living in Florence, only a short time is left to experience one of the most unique and wonderful exhibits for those interested in either the art of wax modeling or the science of medical-surgical pathology practiced in the 1800s.Click here to read the full story and see more images. Images and video above drawn from the Tuscan Traveler website.
The free exhibit, called Oltre il Corpo, L’uomo (Besides the Body, the Man), will end February 12, 2011.
...Whereas the anatomical wax models at [such museums as] Museo La Specola show the body in its perfect and healthy state, the creations at the Pathology Museum, from which curator Elisabetta Susani selected prime examples for Oltre il Corpo, L’uomo, are sometimes shocking representations of diseases that were treated in the 1800s. One of the most interesting is a the wax model side by side with the skeleton of a child with an incurable case of hydrocephalus...
The Pathology Museum was created in 1824 at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, built in 1288 by the father of Dante’s muse Beatrice. It wasn’t until 1742 when there was a move to create a medical academy to formalize the sharing of information among doctors and scientists.
It took another eighty years to establish the Florentine Medical-Physical Society. One of the first acts of the Society was to set up a Pathological Museum. It was not a museum for the public, but rather a repository for information about the pathology and medical-surgical treatment of diseases...
Due to the difficulty of ensuring correct conservation of the pathological materials, it was decided to have some duplicates fabricated in wax. The Museum’s model-makers studied the techniques practiced in the other wax-modeling laboratory in Florence, La Specola.
Surprisingly realistic models were fabricated, providing a fascinating glimpse of the major pathologies in the 19th century. The collection of anatomical wax figures includes numerous wax reproductions, mainly the work of Giuseppe Ricci, Luigi Calamai and Egisto Tortori.
A remarkable example of symbiosis between science and art, the wax models were important, above all, for their value in teaching, allowing professors to illustrate the most important diseases to future physicians without having to depend the dissection of cadavers or the preservation of diseased organs....
Osservatorio dei Saperi e delle Arti (OSA)
Open: Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 10am – 1pm (Free)
Ends: February 12, 2011
Address: Largo Brambilla 3, New Entrance of Careggi Hospital
