Clemente Susini (probably): Anatomical Venus, wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood and Venetian glass case, ca 1790, La Specola, Museo di Storia Naturale, Florence
Anatomical Venus (detail)
Clemente Susini (probably): Slashed Beautyi, wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood and Venetian glass case, ca 1790, La Specola, Museo di Storia Naturale, Florence
Workshop of Clemente Susini: Anatomical waxes, human hair, rosewood and Venetian glass cases, ca 1780s, The Josephinum, Vienna
Workshop of Clemente Susini: Slashed Beauty, wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood and Venetian glass case, ca 1780s, Josephinum, Vienna
Clemente Susini (probably): Slashed Beauty, wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood and Venetian glass case, ca 1790, La Specola, Museo di Storia Naturale, Florence, Italy
Clemente Susini: The Bolognese Venerina, 18th century, Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
The Bolognese Venerina (detail)
Clemente Susini: Anatomical model representing ‘deep lymphatic vessels in a female subject’, human hair, wax, ordered from Fontana by Scarpa, 1794, Museum of the History of the University, Pavia
The Anatomical Venuses and Slashed Beauties created in the late eighteenth century by the studio at ‘La Specola’ Natural History Museum in Florence, Italy, under the leadership of Clemente Susini are the perfect specimens, though to refer to them as specimens or, indeed, even as ‘objects’ seems wrong-headed, besides the point, an insult to their utterly persuasive and enchanting corporeality. Better to refer to them instead – as do their keepers – as she, her,sleeping beauties, slashed beauties.
Adorned with real human hair, glass eyes, golden tiaras and strings of pearls, these ladies recline invitingly in extreme states of anatomical undress on velvet cushions in fine Venetian glass and rosewood cases; bizarre to the modern eye, they intrigue and disturb, bristling with a subtle ontological confusion, flickering between the seemingly irreconcilable edges of life and death, body and soul, animate and inanimate, eros and thanatos, the real and the simulacrum, suggesting corporeal saints, science-age memento mori, CGI of the baroque anatomical imagination, the uncanny incarnate, beautiful death, incorruptible anatomized bodies swooning with voluptuous grace.
Each of Susini’s life sized anatomical wax ladies are awe-inspiring in their hyper-real verisimilitude and their stunning beauty; they are also cyphers, beckoning towards abandoned paths to forgotten – and perhaps forbidden – knowledge, evoking a lost past when God and science, medicine and beauty, body and soul, naturalia and artificialia, anatomy and metaphysics resided side by side without conflict in a single, perfect, and beautiful human creation.
Ode to an Anatomical Venus
Submitted by: Joanna Ebenstein
Clemente Susini (probably): Anatomical Venus, wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood and Venetian glass case, ca 1790, La Specola, Museo di Storia Naturale, Florence
The Anatomical Venuses and Slashed Beauties created in the late eighteenth century by the studio at ‘La Specola’ Natural History Museum in Florence, Italy, under the leadership of Clemente Susini are the perfect specimens, though to refer to them as specimens or, indeed, even as ‘objects’ seems wrong-headed, besides the point, an insult to their utterly persuasive and enchanting corporeality. Better to refer to them instead – as do their keepers – as she, her, sleeping beauties, slashed beauties.
Adorned with real human hair, glass eyes, golden tiaras and strings of pearls, these ladies recline invitingly in extreme states of anatomical undress on velvet cushions in fine Venetian glass and rosewood cases; bizarre to the modern eye, they intrigue and disturb, bristling with a subtle ontological confusion, flickering between the seemingly irreconcilable edges of life and death, body and soul, animate and inanimate, eros and thanatos, the real and the simulacrum, suggesting corporeal saints, science-age memento mori, CGI of the baroque anatomical imagination, the uncanny incarnate, beautiful death, incorruptible anatomized bodies swooning with voluptuous grace.
Each of Susini’s life sized anatomical wax ladies are awe-inspiring in their hyper-real verisimilitude and their stunning beauty; they are also cyphers, beckoning towards abandoned paths to forgotten – and perhaps forbidden – knowledge, evoking a lost past when God and science, medicine and beauty, body and soul, naturalia and artificialia, anatomy and metaphysics resided side by side without conflict in a single, perfect, and beautiful human creation.
All images © Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy