Anatomical models of La Specola

The first room of La Specola’s collection of anatomical models. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Last summer’s trip to Italy checked off a number of bucket list items for me, including a visit to Clemente Susini’s 17th-century anatomical models, housed in Florence’s Museum of Natural History. Offering one of the finest and largest collections of hyper-realistic models in the world, the museum—better known as La Specola—is a veritable place of pilgrimage for those slightly morbid travelers seeking encounters with the uncanny.

The anatomical collection is spread throughout several galleries, each lined with rows of framed drawings and small wood-and-glass cases holding models of dissected body parts. Full-sized figures lie near the rooms’ centers or stand tall along the walls in their original display cases. The first room (pictured above) also contains a few “Theaters of Death”: gory dioramas with bodies in various states of anguish or decay. Meant to remind the viewer of life’s transience and the body’s fallibility, these memento mori by Sicilian Abbot Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656–1701) are among the oldest objects in the collection. My photos of these miniature tableaux are terrible, but you can find images of them here or published in the Taschen book on La Specola’s collection, Encyclopedia Anatomica.

Although the lounging female “Venuses”—with their attractive faces, pearl necklaces, and removable stomachs—are the most famous members of Susini’s creations, many of the museum’s full-sized figures are actually male. Despite their flayed bodies, the male figures strike similarly classical, even subtly sultry, poses.

La Specola also contains zoological and mineralogical collections, as well as an astrological tower. Once the private collection of the Medici family, it opened to the public in 1775 and is now the oldest public museum in Europe.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Head by Gaetano Giulio Zumbo. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Second room of La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

La Specola, Florence. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

This wax model of a giant’s skeleton is based on the bones of a local man. Homeless, the man had lived in the vicinity of La Specola, and the museum paid him during his lifetime for rights to his skeleton after his death. Once he passed away, his bones were found to be incredibly fragile, resulting in the museum’s decision to create the wax form on view today. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Silent, unchanging household: Veronese's figures at Villa Barbaro

One of Veronese’s most engaging figures watching visitors from the walls of Villa Barbaro. Photo from Web Gallery of Art.

With a building designed by Andrea Palladio (completed c. 1558) and immersive frescoes by Paolo Veronese (c. 1560–61), the Villa Barbaro in Maser is one of Italy’s great examples of gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. The home’s original owners, the brothers Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, were well-educated humanists whose tastes are reflected throughout the allegorical, mythological, and classical aspects of Veronese’s masterpiece. Consistent with this Renaissance spirit, the artist probably modeled several of the frescoes’ figures on his patrons, his patrons’ family (including pets), and himself.

Veronese took great pains to create the perception of three dimensions in his work at Maser, depicting naturalistic shadows that mimicked the specific effects of each room’s primary light source, architectural details that feel like logical extensions of the Villa’s Palladian architecture, and life-size figures to live within these fictional spaces. Thus instilled with a bright, startling realism, his figures refuse to blend into the walls like decorative wallpaper, and instead demand to be acknowledged by visitors as fellow actors inhabiting a shared space.

All of this begs the questions: What was it like to live, day-in and day-out, year after year, with these silent, often judging, personages? Was the strangeness compounded for the first owners, who would have seen themselves and people they knew in the unchanging figures while their real bodies altered with age? What was it like to live surrounded by allegories of both behavioral and social roles, like those illustrated in the man of Virtue restraining the woman of Passion with a horse bit? Or to have your family’s coat of arms (or that of the family you worked for) embedded in all of this imagery, as if your familial stamp literally belonged on the world around you?

Unfortunately for us (but good for the frescoes), photography is not allowed within the Villa. All images of Barbaro’s interior included here are therefore from Web Gallery of Art.

View of the Sala a Crociera with Muses and girl peeking through a fictional door. The girl may be based on one of Marcantonio’s children with Giustina Giustiniani. Photo and identifying info from Web Gallery of Art.

Alternate view of the Sala a Crociera showing the contrast between the actual flatness of the painted walls surrounding the far simpler molding, also designed by the artist. The fictional bannister and windows seem to continue the real bannister and window shape seen at the end of the hall. Veronese (or one of his assistants) originally painted the vaulted ceiling to resemble a pergola; the current, whitewashed appearance dates to the 19th century. Photo and identifying info from Web Gallery of Art.

Portrait of the Barbaro’s little dog painted on the trompe l’œil extension of the floor and before a false window with a view onto classical ruins and a bustling trading port. Photo from Web Gallery of Art.

Illusionistic ceiling of the Room of Conjugal Love depicting Hymen with Juno, Venus, and a betrothed couple. The upper portions of the walls are similarly covered in allegories related to marriage. The trompe l’œil grape trellises that seem to extend into the sky serve to increase the believability of the mythological scene between them. Photo and identifying info from Web Gallery of Art.

Virtue Restraining Passion. Photo from Web Gallery of Art.

View from the Sala a Crociera of the possible portrait of Veronese as a nobleman in hunting attire. This one fresco is physically separate from the more immersive and physically conjoined of Veronese’s other rooms, but that difference only makes the artist’s portrait more startling and the illusory extension of the hallway more believable. Photo from Web Gallery of Art.

Bonus:

Exterior of Villa Barbaro, Maser. The central, open window is the same seen in the second view of the Sala a Crociera, above. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

The classical and mythological allusions continue in the Villa’s backyard nymphaeum, seen here with grotto and reflecting pool. Marcantonio Barbaro, an amateur artist, probably designed the nymphaeum and may have sculpted its four giants. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.