March 2, 2020 • 38 mins
In 18th-century Bologna, one of the most skilled and renowned anatomists and wax model makers was a woman named Anna Morandi Manzolini. Working first with her husband then on her own, Anna contributed to the medical and scientific fields immeasurably.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Something that's come up on our show a few times
is the difficulty of teaching anatomy to doctors in the
(00:24):
early days of formal medical education. In terms of the
episodes that Holly and I have worked on together, there's
the Doctor's Riot of seventy eight and ignat Similvis and
the Handwashing Mores, and they both talked about the shortage
of cadavers for dissections due to all kinds of cultural taboos,
along with the lack of refrigeration and the spread of
(00:45):
disease from cadavers to living patients. Um. The shortage of
cadavers also led to grave robbing and murder, and previous
hosts talked about that in the episode Burke and Hair,
Who Didn't Steal Corpses. One of the ways that people
have tried to have void some of these problems as
by using anatomical wax models as teaching tools. And in
(01:05):
eighteenth century Bologna, one of the most skilled and renowned
anatomists and wax model makers was a woman named Anna
Mirandi Manzolini, and she's the person we're talking about today,
which does also mean we're going to be talking a
lot about cadavers and dissections. Also, sometimes you will see
Anna Mirandi Manzolini referred to as both Mirandi and Manzolini,
(01:29):
regardless of whether she was married at that point in
the narrative. And since we're going to be talking about
both her and her husband, just for the sake of clarity,
Anna is Mirandi and her husband is Manzolini. So we
have records of people in Europe making wax models going
back at least four thousand years. This includes votive offerings
(01:49):
left at pilgrimage sites in pre Christian and Christian Europe,
some of which depicted diseased or healthy human organs or
body parts. For example, in medieval Christianity, so one who
felt they had been divinely cured of a leg complaint
might leave a wax model of their leg at a
shrine as thanks. Starting in about the fourteenth century, people
have also made funeral effigies out of wax which depicted
(02:12):
the deceased. By about the thirteenth century, so just a
little bit before those effigies started to come into more
widespread use. People were also using wax models to teach anatomy,
but not in medical schools yet. Visual artists also wanted
to study anatomy, and for a couple of centuries, artists
were both making wax models and also using them to
(02:34):
study the human body. This didn't totally eliminate the need
for dissection, since the process of making an accurate wax
model started with someone making plaster casts of a body,
but the wax models made from those casts could be
very detailed. They were also pliable, and they held up
to repeated handling, and they lasted much longer than a
(02:55):
cadaver did, especially in places with warm weather, without giving
off offensive odor from decomposition or carrying the same level
of risk in terms of spreading diseases. So fast forward
a few hundred years. By the seventeenth century in Europe,
the fields of anatomy and surgery were both starting to
grow in prestige. Anatomists were directly influencing the evolution of
(03:17):
surgery as they studied the human body and drew conclusions
about how it worked and made these anatomical models that
were then used to teach surgeons, and all of this
was also feeding into a public fascination for anatomy. In Bologna,
where Anna Mirandi Manzolini lived, there was an annual public
dissection at the University of Bologna's Teato Anatomico called the
(03:40):
Carnival Dissection. This spanned several days before the start of Lent,
with the dissected cadaver being the body of someone who
had been convicted of a crime and publicly executed just before.
By the eighteenth century, Bologna was also working on an
anatomical museum full of wax representations of the human body.
Whether these models were meant for an art school or
(04:02):
a medical school or a museum, making them still required
multiple cadavers. A modeler who was hoping to make a
whole anatomical series might start with plaster casts of the
whole body prior to dissection. Then, after removing the skin,
another set of casts would document the muscles, the tendons,
the ligaments, and the fascia, and then those structures would
(04:24):
be removed layer by layer, revealing the internal organs, with
casts made of those, with the whole process continuing until
only the bones were left. Unless the modeler also wanted
to make models of the interiors of the bones. The
bones could then be cleaned and used as a teaching tool,
either as individual bones or mounted together as a skeleton.
(04:45):
But in terms of all the soft tissues, this process
was extensive and time consuming enough that one body just
could not last long enough for a modeler to make
casts of everything before it was too decomposed to be usable.
Wax modelers were very protective of their techniques and their recipes,
but in general, in the eighteenth century, wax modelers were
(05:06):
starting with a formula that included bees wax oil or
tallow pitch, and turpentine. This produced a wax that was
durable but pliable, and could be mixed with pigments to
produce different colors. Modelers filled their plaster cast with this wax,
with both the filling process and the technique for releasing
the wax from the cast, both of that being very
(05:27):
heavily protected secrets. Once it was out of the cast,
the wax model would be cleaned, polished, and finished. Membranes, fascia, blood, vessels,
and other details might be painted on or represented with silk,
fabric or thread. The wax portions of the models were
often varnished to protect them from dust and help them
hold up better as finishing touches. Most modelers used real
(05:51):
human hair as well as glass eyes, although some, including
Anna Mirandi Manzlini, generally sculpted their models eyes from way
as well. Depending on how the model was meant to
be used from there, it might be mounted onto some
kind of decorative board or stand. Of course, over time,
the aesthetic and artistic standards used for these models changed
(06:12):
and evolved. When Anna Mirandi Mazzolini was living, models were
at an intersection between science and art. An anatomist might
also make models, but it was also common for an
anatomist and a modeler to work together. The models were
expected to represent the human anatomy, but at the same
time they might have some kind of symbolic or allegorical meaning,
(06:34):
especially when it came to female anatomy. Sometimes artists intentionally
created models that showed evidence of disease or some kind
of atypical formation, But when it came to ordinary anatomical
models that were going to be used for standard anatomy classes,
anatomists and modelers typically worked toward a finished products that
depicted what was thought of as standard or normal. One
(06:58):
full body model that was popular or during Mirandi's time
was the ecorchet or the fladed man, which was an
entire body, usually male, without skin, showing the underlying musculature
in detail. A full body model that became popular after
her death was the anatomical venus that was an entire
female body with real hair and a dissectible abdomen and pelvis.
(07:20):
An anatomical venus had multiple removable layers which typically revealed
a pregnancy once the uterus was visible. All of the
pregnancy was not usually apparent with all of the abdominal
pieces still in place. The anatomical venus definitely had a
more metaphorical element rather than just being a straight up
anatomy model. Apart from this desceptible abdomen, the figures, positioning
(07:45):
and expressions, and overall attitude often had a sensual, ecstatic,
or even erotic appearance. You can see lots of these today.
I personally find them creepy. Uh. An anatomical venus often
had jewelry on, like a string of hurls, and the
first of these is known as the Medici venus, and
it was made for Florence's Museum for Physics and natural
(08:06):
history around seventeen eighty, so that was a few years
after Mirandi's death. This wasn't a style of model that
she personally was making. So Mirandi was living during something
of a heyday in both anatomy and anatomical modeling, which
was happening mostly in parts of what's now Italy, but
especially in Bologna, and she was a huge part of
that heyday. Bologna itself was also in the middle of
(08:28):
its own revival as an intellectual and cultural center. At
the time, Bologna was one of the papal states under
control of the Vatican. By the eighteenth century, Bologna's earlier
academic and intellectual prestige had really faded as a result
of political infighting and mismanagement. A patronage system had been
used to appoint faculty positions, and that meant that appointments
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were being based more on political favors than on the
candidate's qualifications. For years, the Boulonnese Senate had been appointing
Bolonese citizens merrily to these positions, with very few exceptions,
regardless of whether another candidate from somewhere else might be
more qualified. Plus, Bologna's universities were tending to teach purely
theoretical topics rather than doing any kind of experimentation or
(09:14):
hands on study. Of course, there are lots of different
people and institutions involved any time an entity tries to
make this kind of turnaround. In Bologna's case, a couple
of people were particularly prominent, though. One was General Luigi
Fernando Marsilli, who founded the Institute of Sciences and the
Arts in seventeen fourteen to be a place of quote, experiment, classification,
(09:37):
and exposition. This institute combined two existing institutions. They were
the Academy of Sciences and the Clementina Academy of Art,
and they were both housed together at the Palazzo Pogi.
Marsilli also envisioned the space as physically connecting the sciences
and the arts and encouraging collaboration between the two of them.
(09:58):
Anatomy became a huge part of the connecting point, with
the anatomists and the artists working together to create these
physical models. Another was Prospero Lambertini, who became Pope Benedict
the fourteen, who was from Bologna. While he was working
for the Vatican Library, he was dispatched to Bologna to
mediate a dispute that basically boiled down to patronage versus qualifications.
(10:20):
He sided with qualifications, which won the trust of people
who were trying to reform Bologna's institutes of learning. He
continued to focus on Bologna's development as an intellectual center
after he became archbishop, encouraging the creation of an anatomical
museum at Palazzo po g That project was in the
works for years, but it didn't really get moving until
(10:42):
after he became pope in seventeen forty, and he authorized
a budget for it. Another focus for Pope Benedict the
fourteenth was making the sciences and higher education more open
to women. That connected back to Mirandi's career as an
anatomist and a modeler, and we will get to that
after quick sponsor break in Bologna in the eighteenth century,
(11:10):
upper class children were generally getting the same education regardless
of their gender. Let's tied back to the idea of
reviving Bologna as an intellectual center, as well as the
idea that classical Greek and Roman knowledge needed to be
preserved for posterity. It wasn't unheard of for girls who
were of a more modest means to be educated as well.
(11:32):
If a girl was considered particularly talented, a lot of
times somebody in the community who had more money would
arrange for her education. Bologna's universities also became at least
as some extent open to women as students around this time.
They still were not enrolled in equal numbers to men,
but they had more opportunities for higher education than women
(11:53):
did in many other parts of Europe. Women who graduated
from Bologna's universities or otherwise except eld in the intellectual
sphere essentially became famous. One example is Laura Bassie, who
got a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Bologna
in seventeen thirty four. She was the first woman in
Europe to become a physics professor at a European university,
(12:16):
and from the year she got her doctorate until her
death in seventeen seventy eight, she lectured at the public
dissections that we talked about before the break every year.
Bologna's lady scholars were regarded with both respect and curiosity.
One part of the Enlightenment which was taking place in
Europe Throughout all of this was the woman question, which
was a debate about the nature of women and their abilities,
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as well as the subject of equal rights. The lady
scholars were pointed to both as examples of women's capabilities
and as exceptions to what the typical woman was. Simultaneously,
These women rose to the tops of their fields on
their own merits, while also being viewed as kind of
curiosities who were worth knowing about because they were women.
(13:01):
They also continued to face sexism in these roles. Laura Bassie,
for example, could only teach from her home until very
late in life. For many years, she could only teach
at a university if she was specifically asked to buy
the senate, So she had kind of this public lecturing
role with the dissections where people could see, oh, here
is our our lady professor, isn't she amazing? But she
(13:23):
couldn't actually teach in a regular teaching role at the university.
The classes must come to my house. That opens up
for me a raft of questions about how you manage that.
But that's yeah, well, And it wasn't uncommon at all
for people to have schools in their homes at that point,
Like a lot of people were getting their first medical
education at a medical school that someone was teaching in
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their home, but she was still barred from teaching at
the university for a long time because of her gender.
Anna Mirandi was born into this world on January twenty one,
seventeen fourteen. Her parents were Rossa Giovannini and Carlo Moran.
She also had a brother named Lazzaro. The family was
a very modest means when Anna married, and aristocrat paid
(14:07):
for her dowry as an act of charity. Beyond that, though,
we know almost nothing about her life until she married
Giovanni Manzolini in seventeen forty, although there are some sources
that put the date of that marriage a few years earlier.
Giovanni Manzolini was an anatomist and a sculptor, and was
working as the chief assistant to the Papal Commission that
(14:28):
was building the Anatomy Museum at the Institute of Sciences
and Arts. But just a few years into their marriage,
Manzolini had a very public falling out with the Commission's director,
er Cole Lay. Pope Benedict had commissioned a full set
of muscular and skeletal figures for the museum in seventeen
forty two, including models of a nude male and female
(14:50):
represented as Adam and Eve. Although assistants were carrying out
most of the work on the models, Lay was getting
the credit for it, as Manzolini refined kind and improved
their wax formula and surpassed lately in his skill as
a sculptor. This really rankled. He resigned in seventeen forty six,
and he and Mirandi began making models together in their home.
(15:12):
Lay is going to come up again later. He seems
to have had quite an ego that he jealously protected,
including at the expense of allowing people who were better
than him to be known as better than him. We
really don't know whether Mirandi had been able to take
advantage of Bologna's relatively open higher education opportunities for women.
(15:35):
We don't really know what her education was. If she
attended a university, It doesn't appear that she graduated. But
she was deeply knowledgeable about anatomy, so skilled as an artist,
and she drew on all of that in her work
making anatomical models. From seventeen forty six to seventeen fifty five,
Mirandi and Manzolini worked on anatomical models as a team.
(15:59):
They did the require dissections and cast making in their
home and finished the models in their home studio. They
also taught anatomy classes using the models that they made.
It was common at the time for people to teach
all kinds of subjects, including anatomy and medicine, in their homes.
As Tracy said a moment ago, their students included medical
students as well as people who were just enthusiastic about anatomy.
(16:23):
Many accounts say that Mirandi was squeamish about the cadavers,
but that she overcame her fear and revulsion to work
with her husband. However, a lot of the earliest biographies
of her also present her accomplishments as something that she
did only out of her devotion to her husband, so
it's not clear if she really was squeamish or if
(16:43):
that was sort of an embellishment made to emphasize how
dedicated she was to him, how she like had something
she needed to overcome, and that she only did it
because she was so dedicated to her husband and to
being a good wife to him. The work that Mirandi
and Manzolini did together acquired them to dissect hundreds of cadavers.
(17:03):
By the end of her career, Mirandi had done as
many as one thousand dissections. Most of these bodies came
from the Hospital of Santa Maria de la Marte or St.
Mary of Death, which housed Bologna's mortuary and was also
where it's poorest citizens sought care. So, as has been
the case in other episodes where we have talked about
the uses of cadavers in things like medical studies, many
(17:25):
of these were the bodies of poor people or of
people who had been executed for a crime that they
had been convicted of. The couple did most of their
dissecting work during the winter and overnight to try to
preserve the bodies longer, but when it came to their
finished models, their goal was never to replicate the look
of a corpse or dead tissue. This is something that
(17:47):
like if you see some wax anatomy models made in
the in in Britain around the same time, some of
them look like that's a model of a corpse. They
really strove for their models to appear lifelike. It came
to things like limbs and hands. The models were positioned
in a way that suggested movement, and at the same
time they also strove for total accuracy and the anatomical
(18:10):
structures that they were representing. This set their work apart
from some of their contemporaries, whose work was sometimes idealized
or allegorical, with sculptors trying to make a model that
was sublime rather than one that was accurate. Something else
that set them apart was their approach to the dissections.
Rather than choosing one region of the body and focusing
on that, they took a systemic approach, dissecting and modeling, say,
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all of the parts of the respiratory system as one project.
Marandi and Manzolini's reputations as both anatomists and as model
makers grew very quickly as they worked together. People visited
their home studio during their grand tours of the continent.
They also learned some really high profile commissions for their work.
King Charles Emmanuel the second of Sardinia, King Charles of Naples,
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and King Augustus the Third of Poland, a lot with
other monarchs, nobles and statesmen, all commissioned anatomical models from them.
Their models were also commissioned by medical forerunners in Bologna.
Giovanni Antonio Galli commissioned a set of obstetrics models, including
the uterus during pregnancy, for Bologna's first school of obstetrics,
(19:18):
which he opened in his home in seventeen forty nine,
and this involved making models of someone who had died
during pregnancy. The couple also made a set of obstetrics
models and models of the ear for Pierre Paolo Molinelli,
who was Bologna's first chair of practical surgery, so their
work was an important part of both these specialties in
their earliest years in Bologna. Marandi and Manzolini's work as
(19:41):
anatomists also went beyond just making these representative models. They
were learning and making discoveries about anatomy and physiology as
part of their work, and informing others of what they discovered.
For example, on March nine, seventeen forty nine, Manzolini published
a treatise on deafness. Well it didn't credit Mirandi as
a co author. This paper was based on anatomical and
(20:04):
modeling work that the couple did together. Marandi produced the
most accurate and most finely detailed models of the ear
and its associated structures. Some of which are tiny during
her lifetime, so she definitely contributed to this paper, even
though she wasn't named in it. At the time, the
medical community was debating what caused deafness and why most
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deaf people also did not speak. Manzolini's paper reported on
a dissection that they had conducted on the body of
someone who had been deaf from birth and also did
not speak. They found no differences in the nerve and
muscle structures involved with speech from what they saw in
the bodies of people who did speak, but they found
that this person's coclea was essentially absent. So Manzolini's paper
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concluded that in this case of congenital deafness, the deafness
was the reason for the absence of speech and not
some other anatomical cause. After the Anatomical Museum at the
Institute of Science and Arts was complete, Mirandi also led
tours of the collection for high ranking visitors to the city.
She also tended to be the person who gave tours
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and demonstrations of their home studio. In addition to being
her husband's partner and everything related to dissection and modeling,
she was also really the public face of their anatomical
work and their modeling business. Mirandi's life changed significantly in
seventeen fifty five, and we will get to that after
a sponsor break. On to seven five, Giovanni Manzolini died.
(21:43):
He had been seriously ill with some kind of progressive
wasting condition for some time. In some accounts it's described
as tuberculosis, and others it is dropsy, which was usually
used to describe a dima, so this could have been
something like heart failure or a circulatory problem. Mirandi was
forty one at that point and the mother to two sons,
(22:04):
Giuseppa aged ten and Carlo, aged six. She and her
husband had actually had six or eight children together during
their marriage, but these two were the only ones who survived.
Mirandi was well known and highly respected for her work
as both an anatomist and a modeler. At this point,
she had also taken over all of her husband's work
as he became too ill to do it, and she
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was faced with a difficult decision. Not long after Manzolini's death,
Catherine the Great, at the time Grand Duchess of Russia
extended an invitation for her to come live at court.
Other monarchs and nobles had done the same. There wasn't
exactly a bidding war, but many of these offers were
motivated by the idea that Mirandi would be available now
(22:47):
that her husband had died. But Mirandi really just doesn't
seem to have wanted to leave Bologna. It doesn't even
appear that she traveled outside of Bologna during her life.
The leadership of Bologna did want her to leave either.
She wasn't just one of their lady scholars, she was
their lady anatomist. If she moved away, they would be
(23:07):
losing both a resource for the study of anatomy and
sort of a tourist attraction. So Pope Benedict the fourteen
granted Mirandi a lifetime stipend of two hundred lira. In
seventeen fifty five, she was also named public Modeler and
Demonstrator of Anatomy at the University of Bologna. Also in
seventeen fifty five, she was inducted as an honorary member
(23:30):
of Clementina Academy of Art. The last woman to be
so inducted before Mirandi was previous podcast subject Rosalba Carrera
thirty five years previously. Mirandi also continued to teach anatomy
in her home, and in early seventeen fifty six she
was given access to as many cadavers and body parts
as she might need for her modeling work from the
Hospital of St. Mary of Death. However, that two hundred
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lira was a very small stipend. By comparison, l lay
stipend was twelve hundred lira. Laura Bassie's was about five lira,
and that was probably because she had a university degree
while Mirandi didn't. Additionally, anatomical models were really time and
labor intensive to produce, and Mirandi's commissions often involved multiple
(24:17):
intermediaries along the way. It was not uncommon at all
for the time between the commission and the payment for
her work to be at least two or three years.
So this stipend and her commissions were enough to keep
Mirandi in Bologna, but not enough to let her make
ends meet. On October three, seventeen fifty six, she surrendered
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her older son, just Sepate, to an orphanage and relinquished
all her parental rights for him. That was something that
had been arranged almost a year before, because it was
obvious that Mirandi could not make enough money as a
woman in her position to support two children, It really
was not that uncommon for parents to surrender their children
to orphanages at this point, and a little more than
(24:58):
two years later, Jesseppa was adopted by a noble family
who had no air of their own. Randi had been
quite well known before her husband's death, but afterward, her
status as a widow made her even more of a curiosity.
She continued doing dissections and making models at home, with
a particular focus on the hands, the sensory organs, and
(25:19):
the male reproductive system. She wrote a two hundred fifty
page anatomical notebook, which was a handbook of anatomy that
corresponded with her models, along with nine volumes of notes
on her dissections and her models. One thing she doesn't
seem to have kept is extensive notes on the anatomy
of the female reproductive system, possibly because she thought anything
(25:41):
she might contribute to that knowledge would be dismissed as
intuition or something else non scientific because of her sex.
It's kind of speculative, But a number of people have
been like, yeah, she just didn't really comment on like
the uterus or the ovaries, on anything like that at all.
In any detail, while meanwhile she made extensive work of
(26:01):
the male anatomy are the male reproductive anatomy specifically. She
also distanced herself from the idea that she was an artist.
The Academy of Art that she had been inducted into
was part of the Institute of Sciences, like we set
up at the top of the show, and that was
the affiliation that she claimed for herself, which kind of
amuses me because that was technically true, but it did
(26:24):
put the focus on science instead of art. For the
next nine years after her husband's death, Marandi did extensive work.
She secured commissions for model series from the University of Turin,
the Royal Society of London, and nobles and monarchs, including
Catherine the Great. Visitors to her studio included George Gordon
Lord Byron, French astronomer Joseph Jerome de Lalande, and professor
(26:47):
of medicine John Morgan, who helped establish medical education in
the United States. Byron naturally found her focus on the
male reproductive anatomy quite titillating, as did some other commentators.
This period of tense work was interrupted in seventeen sixty four,
when Marandi became seriously ill and had to spend several
months recovering. During those nine years between her husband's death
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and her illness, she had created some of the most
detailed and accurate models of some of the body's most
delicate and tiny structures. She had also discovered the course
and attachment of the oblique eye muscle. She also had
continued to improve on the wax formulation and methods that
she and her husband had used. She had sculpted large
(27:30):
scale versions of the eye and ear so she could
show their microscopic structures. She had corrected the work of
early anatomists, and her contemporaries consulted her on subtle anatomical questions.
Germano as Aguidi, one of Bologna's leading anatomy professors, described
her as having astonishing skill both in dissecting and in
(27:51):
creating the wax anatomical figures, and said that she had
become so renowned that quote her name has reached as
far as Moscow. A to this illness, though Mirandi had
a lot of trouble getting back on her feet. On
September three, seventeen sixty five, she asked for an increase
in her honor are Um of an additional two lira
a year. Her pace still would have been less than
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Laura Bassie's, and it would have been a third of als,
but that was denied. On May six of the following year,
Mirandi sold her collection of wax models to Senator Count
Girolamo Ranuzi, who eventually published the entirety of her work.
She later moved into his palace to act as a
curator and caretaker for that collection. She sold him her
(28:35):
anatomical library and all of her instruments on April six,
seventeen seventy one. She was permitted to keep using all
of these tools and materials, but any models that she
made from this point were probably made from plaster casts
of her existing work rather than fresh dissections. She also
continued to receive high profile visitors, including Emperor Joseph the
(28:57):
Second of Austria in seventeen sixty nine. I think her
patron was okay with her making wax models in his home,
but not with dissecting cadavers in his home, even though
she had done that in her own home with so
many cadavers over so many years. Anna Mirandi Manzolini died
on July nine, seventeen seventy four, at the age of sixty.
(29:20):
Her will mentions both of her sons. She references the
fact that her older son had been adopted by this
noble family and was going to be coming into an
inheritance from them, so that then, apart from leaving fifty
lira to a servant, she left most of the rest
of her estate to her younger son, who was not
coming into some other fortune. Most of this inheritance, though,
(29:44):
was continuing residuals from the sale of her models and
her library. She was buried at her local church, but
exhumed and moved to Certosa Cemetery outside the city walls
in the nineteenth century. Two years after her death, the
Bonese Senate purchased Marandi's wax works and installed them in
the Anatomical Museum at the Boulonnese Institute of Sciences in
(30:04):
Palazzo Pogi. The Manzolini Room was inaugurated at the institute
in seventeen seventies. Seven er Les ecourches were moved to
make room. Ercole Lay had blocked the installation of work
by anatomists and sculptors he saw as a threat to
his own reputation and legacy, but his death in seventeen
sixty six had removed that obstacle. Just after Mirandi's death,
(30:28):
the center of anatomy and wax modeling and what's now
Italy moved from Bologna to Florence. The Royal Museum of
Natural History open there in seventeen seventy five, with many
of its models made by Felicea Fontana. Clemento Sussini, who
made the first anatomical venus, was also from Florence. Mirandi's
earliest biographers often describe her work primarily in relation to
(30:52):
her husband, as something that she took up and continued
in devotion to him. They also tended to frame her
as an improvisatrice, which was a popular idea at the
time that brilliant women from modest families just sort of
appeared and then spontaneously and naturally evidenced some kind of
major gift in the sciences. It wasn't until more recent
(31:13):
decades that people examined her work on its own without
the idea that it was an extension of her husband
or some kind of specifically feminine random genius. In the
centuries after her death, Mirrandi's wax models changed hands a
few times and eventually fell into disrepair. Much of what
was commissioned for private collectors has since been lost. Her
(31:35):
extensive study of the male reproductive anatomy was lost as well.
Her notes still remain, but not the actual models, but
many of the surviving pieces were extensively restored in advance
of the muse A de Palazzo Pogis reopening in two thousand.
This included Mirandy's life size self portrait in wax, along
with a portrait of her husband. In her self portrait,
(31:58):
she has dressed in the attire fire of a Bullonese
upper class woman, including strings of pearls at her neck
and wrists, and she's shown in the act of dissecting
a human brain. Her husband is depicted in the process
of dissecting a heart. Art critics have noted that this
was a subversion of seventeenth century beliefs about sex and gender,
something that was really being debated during the Enlightenment. One
(32:22):
widespread belief, though, was that women were ruled by their
hearts and their feelings, while men were ruled by their minds,
something that persists today. But these two wax works pair
Mirandi with a brain and her husband with a heart. Eventually, refrigeration,
air conditioning, and adequate supply of cadavers, and the development
(32:43):
of plastics supplanted the wax and anatomical model. Most of
them that still exist today are museum pieces rather than
being used as active instructional tools. However, wax is still
a modeling medium for artists and things like the Madam
Tussaud wax us. I mean, wax is cool. It is.
I've been to the one in New York and I
(33:05):
actually had a lot more fun there than I thought
that I might. I don't know what, I just it's like,
it's a wax museum whatever. But and then there was
a there was a Ghostbusters installation. I don't know if
it's still there, but I was very excited about that.
Uh that was like a day that you and I
were in New York for something and I had a
couple of free hours. Anyway, if you want to learn
(33:28):
more than what we have just talked about, um read
The Lady Anatomist, The Life and Work of Anna Mirandi
Manslini by Rebecca mess Barger. That was one of the
sources for this episode. It goes into more detail about
all kinds of stuff about her life, and it's just
in general, a really interesting book with lots of great footnotes.
If you want other citations in detail, do you have
(33:50):
a little bit of listener mail? I knew, uh this
is from Teagan. This actually came almost a month ago
at this point, but I needed to ask to a
question about it before I read it, and Teagan said
it's fine, please read it. So uh. Teagan says, Dear Tracy,
and Holly Tan has an episode suggestion that I'm going
to skim past. I also couldn't resist writing to you
(34:13):
after hearing your behind the scenes many on Lord Elgin
and the Parth and on Marble's. I am a museum
curator slash educator, and I'm very much in the give
them Back camp and was interested to hear their history.
I visited the British Museum a few years ago with
my husband on our honeymoon, but we didn't stay in
that room very long because I had promised myself I
would turn my work brain off for the day so
(34:34):
that I could enjoy the museum. Of course, I was
still wearing my Museums are not neutral t shirt like
you do. I was amused to see that the British
Museum has pamphlets in that room explaining their position on
not returning the marbles, which were as one sided as
you might imagine. It was uncomfortable to me to see
these pamphlets when they didn't have any such disclaimers with
(34:55):
the many many other artifacts of questionable providence or ownership.
But that's the power of a high profile controversy. I
strongly agree with you about the paternalism aspect of museum collecting.
I can say that the field is absolutely having conversations
that include but if this high profile repatriation happens, then
people will look more closely at the providence of other
(35:16):
things we have. As you can imagine, there are lots
of people within the field who say, yes, that's the point.
No one's goal is to empty museum collections entirely, but
to be more ethical in our practice. Present day professional
standards require museums to do due diligence to ensure that
the people who give or sell them artifacts have good
and clear title. But professional standards don't mean everyone lives
(35:38):
up to them all the time, and of course there
are plenty of museums that have not done the work
to confront the histories of their collections. Last, but not least,
if you're ever interested in a guided visit to the
either gnome at Massachusetts General Hospital, where surgical anesthesia was
first successfully publicly demonstrated in eighteen forty six, I'd be
happy to show you around. UM. I'm very intrigued by
(36:01):
that idea, so maybe I will make a trip into
Boston sometime soon. All the best, Teagan and then um
taken clarifies that it is uh long time, first time emailing,
but Tigan did meet both of us after a live
show in Summerville, UM, after volunteering with headcount. Thank you
(36:23):
so much, Tigan for writing to us today. Thank you
also when I emailed to say, hey, I really love
this email, but also it seems like an email where
people could uh you know, pieceta tails together. We try
to protect people's privacy. UM, she said, please read it. Well,
not please read it, she said, we had her permission
to read it. So thank you Tiggan for that email, UM,
(36:47):
and for having that great insider perspective on what's going
on at museums right now. If you would like to
write to us about this or any other podcast, We're
a history podcast that i heart radio dot com. We're
also all over social media at miss in History. That's
where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Uh.
We used to tell folks in this part that we
(37:08):
had a website with a searchable archive of every episode. Ever,
our website has changed. It's not so searchable anymore. However,
Google has mostly caught up with the shift, so you
can do what I used to do for the old
website to get links for people, which is to google
the episode topic followed by stuff you missed the History Class.
(37:29):
I know it's a little convoluted, but it's still sort
of searchable, just in a different way. And you can
subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart
Radio app, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radios How stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
(37:51):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Something that's come up on our show a few times
is the difficulty of teaching anatomy to doctors in the
(00:24):
early days of formal medical education. In terms of the
episodes that Holly and I have worked on together, there's
the Doctor's Riot of seventy eight and ignat Similvis and
the Handwashing Mores, and they both talked about the shortage
of cadavers for dissections due to all kinds of cultural taboos,
along with the lack of refrigeration and the spread of
(00:45):
disease from cadavers to living patients. Um. The shortage of
cadavers also led to grave robbing and murder, and previous
hosts talked about that in the episode Burke and Hair,
Who Didn't Steal Corpses. One of the ways that people
have tried to have void some of these problems as
by using anatomical wax models as teaching tools. And in
(01:05):
eighteenth century Bologna, one of the most skilled and renowned
anatomists and wax model makers was a woman named Anna
Mirandi Manzolini, and she's the person we're talking about today,
which does also mean we're going to be talking a
lot about cadavers and dissections. Also, sometimes you will see
Anna Mirandi Manzolini referred to as both Mirandi and Manzolini,
(01:29):
regardless of whether she was married at that point in
the narrative. And since we're going to be talking about
both her and her husband, just for the sake of clarity,
Anna is Mirandi and her husband is Manzolini. So we
have records of people in Europe making wax models going
back at least four thousand years. This includes votive offerings
(01:49):
left at pilgrimage sites in pre Christian and Christian Europe,
some of which depicted diseased or healthy human organs or
body parts. For example, in medieval Christianity, so one who
felt they had been divinely cured of a leg complaint
might leave a wax model of their leg at a
shrine as thanks. Starting in about the fourteenth century, people
have also made funeral effigies out of wax which depicted
(02:12):
the deceased. By about the thirteenth century, so just a
little bit before those effigies started to come into more
widespread use. People were also using wax models to teach anatomy,
but not in medical schools yet. Visual artists also wanted
to study anatomy, and for a couple of centuries, artists
were both making wax models and also using them to
(02:34):
study the human body. This didn't totally eliminate the need
for dissection, since the process of making an accurate wax
model started with someone making plaster casts of a body,
but the wax models made from those casts could be
very detailed. They were also pliable, and they held up
to repeated handling, and they lasted much longer than a
(02:55):
cadaver did, especially in places with warm weather, without giving
off offensive odor from decomposition or carrying the same level
of risk in terms of spreading diseases. So fast forward
a few hundred years. By the seventeenth century in Europe,
the fields of anatomy and surgery were both starting to
grow in prestige. Anatomists were directly influencing the evolution of
(03:17):
surgery as they studied the human body and drew conclusions
about how it worked and made these anatomical models that
were then used to teach surgeons, and all of this
was also feeding into a public fascination for anatomy. In Bologna,
where Anna Mirandi Manzolini lived, there was an annual public
dissection at the University of Bologna's Teato Anatomico called the
(03:40):
Carnival Dissection. This spanned several days before the start of Lent,
with the dissected cadaver being the body of someone who
had been convicted of a crime and publicly executed just before.
By the eighteenth century, Bologna was also working on an
anatomical museum full of wax representations of the human body.
Whether these models were meant for an art school or
(04:02):
a medical school or a museum, making them still required
multiple cadavers. A modeler who was hoping to make a
whole anatomical series might start with plaster casts of the
whole body prior to dissection. Then, after removing the skin,
another set of casts would document the muscles, the tendons,
the ligaments, and the fascia, and then those structures would
(04:24):
be removed layer by layer, revealing the internal organs, with
casts made of those, with the whole process continuing until
only the bones were left. Unless the modeler also wanted
to make models of the interiors of the bones. The
bones could then be cleaned and used as a teaching tool,
either as individual bones or mounted together as a skeleton.
(04:45):
But in terms of all the soft tissues, this process
was extensive and time consuming enough that one body just
could not last long enough for a modeler to make
casts of everything before it was too decomposed to be usable.
Wax modelers were very protective of their techniques and their recipes,
but in general, in the eighteenth century, wax modelers were
(05:06):
starting with a formula that included bees wax oil or
tallow pitch, and turpentine. This produced a wax that was
durable but pliable, and could be mixed with pigments to
produce different colors. Modelers filled their plaster cast with this wax,
with both the filling process and the technique for releasing
the wax from the cast, both of that being very
(05:27):
heavily protected secrets. Once it was out of the cast,
the wax model would be cleaned, polished, and finished. Membranes, fascia, blood, vessels,
and other details might be painted on or represented with silk,
fabric or thread. The wax portions of the models were
often varnished to protect them from dust and help them
hold up better as finishing touches. Most modelers used real
(05:51):
human hair as well as glass eyes, although some, including
Anna Mirandi Manzlini, generally sculpted their models eyes from way
as well. Depending on how the model was meant to
be used from there, it might be mounted onto some
kind of decorative board or stand. Of course, over time,
the aesthetic and artistic standards used for these models changed
(06:12):
and evolved. When Anna Mirandi Mazzolini was living, models were
at an intersection between science and art. An anatomist might
also make models, but it was also common for an
anatomist and a modeler to work together. The models were
expected to represent the human anatomy, but at the same
time they might have some kind of symbolic or allegorical meaning,
(06:34):
especially when it came to female anatomy. Sometimes artists intentionally
created models that showed evidence of disease or some kind
of atypical formation, But when it came to ordinary anatomical
models that were going to be used for standard anatomy classes,
anatomists and modelers typically worked toward a finished products that
depicted what was thought of as standard or normal. One
(06:58):
full body model that was popular or during Mirandi's time
was the ecorchet or the fladed man, which was an
entire body, usually male, without skin, showing the underlying musculature
in detail. A full body model that became popular after
her death was the anatomical venus that was an entire
female body with real hair and a dissectible abdomen and pelvis.
(07:20):
An anatomical venus had multiple removable layers which typically revealed
a pregnancy once the uterus was visible. All of the
pregnancy was not usually apparent with all of the abdominal
pieces still in place. The anatomical venus definitely had a
more metaphorical element rather than just being a straight up
anatomy model. Apart from this desceptible abdomen, the figures, positioning
(07:45):
and expressions, and overall attitude often had a sensual, ecstatic,
or even erotic appearance. You can see lots of these today.
I personally find them creepy. Uh. An anatomical venus often
had jewelry on, like a string of hurls, and the
first of these is known as the Medici venus, and
it was made for Florence's Museum for Physics and natural
(08:06):
history around seventeen eighty, so that was a few years
after Mirandi's death. This wasn't a style of model that
she personally was making. So Mirandi was living during something
of a heyday in both anatomy and anatomical modeling, which
was happening mostly in parts of what's now Italy, but
especially in Bologna, and she was a huge part of
that heyday. Bologna itself was also in the middle of
(08:28):
its own revival as an intellectual and cultural center. At
the time, Bologna was one of the papal states under
control of the Vatican. By the eighteenth century, Bologna's earlier
academic and intellectual prestige had really faded as a result
of political infighting and mismanagement. A patronage system had been
used to appoint faculty positions, and that meant that appointments
(08:51):
were being based more on political favors than on the
candidate's qualifications. For years, the Boulonnese Senate had been appointing
Bolonese citizens merrily to these positions, with very few exceptions,
regardless of whether another candidate from somewhere else might be
more qualified. Plus, Bologna's universities were tending to teach purely
theoretical topics rather than doing any kind of experimentation or
(09:14):
hands on study. Of course, there are lots of different
people and institutions involved any time an entity tries to
make this kind of turnaround. In Bologna's case, a couple
of people were particularly prominent, though. One was General Luigi
Fernando Marsilli, who founded the Institute of Sciences and the
Arts in seventeen fourteen to be a place of quote, experiment, classification,
(09:37):
and exposition. This institute combined two existing institutions. They were
the Academy of Sciences and the Clementina Academy of Art,
and they were both housed together at the Palazzo Pogi.
Marsilli also envisioned the space as physically connecting the sciences
and the arts and encouraging collaboration between the two of them.
(09:58):
Anatomy became a huge part of the connecting point, with
the anatomists and the artists working together to create these
physical models. Another was Prospero Lambertini, who became Pope Benedict
the fourteen, who was from Bologna. While he was working
for the Vatican Library, he was dispatched to Bologna to
mediate a dispute that basically boiled down to patronage versus qualifications.
(10:20):
He sided with qualifications, which won the trust of people
who were trying to reform Bologna's institutes of learning. He
continued to focus on Bologna's development as an intellectual center
after he became archbishop, encouraging the creation of an anatomical
museum at Palazzo po g That project was in the
works for years, but it didn't really get moving until
(10:42):
after he became pope in seventeen forty, and he authorized
a budget for it. Another focus for Pope Benedict the
fourteenth was making the sciences and higher education more open
to women. That connected back to Mirandi's career as an
anatomist and a modeler, and we will get to that
after quick sponsor break in Bologna in the eighteenth century,
(11:10):
upper class children were generally getting the same education regardless
of their gender. Let's tied back to the idea of
reviving Bologna as an intellectual center, as well as the
idea that classical Greek and Roman knowledge needed to be
preserved for posterity. It wasn't unheard of for girls who
were of a more modest means to be educated as well.
(11:32):
If a girl was considered particularly talented, a lot of
times somebody in the community who had more money would
arrange for her education. Bologna's universities also became at least
as some extent open to women as students around this time.
They still were not enrolled in equal numbers to men,
but they had more opportunities for higher education than women
(11:53):
did in many other parts of Europe. Women who graduated
from Bologna's universities or otherwise except eld in the intellectual
sphere essentially became famous. One example is Laura Bassie, who
got a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Bologna
in seventeen thirty four. She was the first woman in
Europe to become a physics professor at a European university,
(12:16):
and from the year she got her doctorate until her
death in seventeen seventy eight, she lectured at the public
dissections that we talked about before the break every year.
Bologna's lady scholars were regarded with both respect and curiosity.
One part of the Enlightenment which was taking place in
Europe Throughout all of this was the woman question, which
was a debate about the nature of women and their abilities,
(12:39):
as well as the subject of equal rights. The lady
scholars were pointed to both as examples of women's capabilities
and as exceptions to what the typical woman was. Simultaneously,
These women rose to the tops of their fields on
their own merits, while also being viewed as kind of
curiosities who were worth knowing about because they were women.
(13:01):
They also continued to face sexism in these roles. Laura Bassie,
for example, could only teach from her home until very
late in life. For many years, she could only teach
at a university if she was specifically asked to buy
the senate, So she had kind of this public lecturing
role with the dissections where people could see, oh, here
is our our lady professor, isn't she amazing? But she
(13:23):
couldn't actually teach in a regular teaching role at the university.
The classes must come to my house. That opens up
for me a raft of questions about how you manage that.
But that's yeah, well, And it wasn't uncommon at all
for people to have schools in their homes at that point,
Like a lot of people were getting their first medical
education at a medical school that someone was teaching in
(13:45):
their home, but she was still barred from teaching at
the university for a long time because of her gender.
Anna Mirandi was born into this world on January twenty one,
seventeen fourteen. Her parents were Rossa Giovannini and Carlo Moran.
She also had a brother named Lazzaro. The family was
a very modest means when Anna married, and aristocrat paid
(14:07):
for her dowry as an act of charity. Beyond that, though,
we know almost nothing about her life until she married
Giovanni Manzolini in seventeen forty, although there are some sources
that put the date of that marriage a few years earlier.
Giovanni Manzolini was an anatomist and a sculptor, and was
working as the chief assistant to the Papal Commission that
(14:28):
was building the Anatomy Museum at the Institute of Sciences
and Arts. But just a few years into their marriage,
Manzolini had a very public falling out with the Commission's director,
er Cole Lay. Pope Benedict had commissioned a full set
of muscular and skeletal figures for the museum in seventeen
forty two, including models of a nude male and female
(14:50):
represented as Adam and Eve. Although assistants were carrying out
most of the work on the models, Lay was getting
the credit for it, as Manzolini refined kind and improved
their wax formula and surpassed lately in his skill as
a sculptor. This really rankled. He resigned in seventeen forty six,
and he and Mirandi began making models together in their home.
(15:12):
Lay is going to come up again later. He seems
to have had quite an ego that he jealously protected,
including at the expense of allowing people who were better
than him to be known as better than him. We
really don't know whether Mirandi had been able to take
advantage of Bologna's relatively open higher education opportunities for women.
(15:35):
We don't really know what her education was. If she
attended a university, It doesn't appear that she graduated. But
she was deeply knowledgeable about anatomy, so skilled as an artist,
and she drew on all of that in her work
making anatomical models. From seventeen forty six to seventeen fifty five,
Mirandi and Manzolini worked on anatomical models as a team.
(15:59):
They did the require dissections and cast making in their
home and finished the models in their home studio. They
also taught anatomy classes using the models that they made.
It was common at the time for people to teach
all kinds of subjects, including anatomy and medicine, in their homes.
As Tracy said a moment ago, their students included medical
students as well as people who were just enthusiastic about anatomy.
(16:23):
Many accounts say that Mirandi was squeamish about the cadavers,
but that she overcame her fear and revulsion to work
with her husband. However, a lot of the earliest biographies
of her also present her accomplishments as something that she
did only out of her devotion to her husband, so
it's not clear if she really was squeamish or if
(16:43):
that was sort of an embellishment made to emphasize how
dedicated she was to him, how she like had something
she needed to overcome, and that she only did it
because she was so dedicated to her husband and to
being a good wife to him. The work that Mirandi
and Manzolini did together acquired them to dissect hundreds of cadavers.
(17:03):
By the end of her career, Mirandi had done as
many as one thousand dissections. Most of these bodies came
from the Hospital of Santa Maria de la Marte or St.
Mary of Death, which housed Bologna's mortuary and was also
where it's poorest citizens sought care. So, as has been
the case in other episodes where we have talked about
the uses of cadavers in things like medical studies, many
(17:25):
of these were the bodies of poor people or of
people who had been executed for a crime that they
had been convicted of. The couple did most of their
dissecting work during the winter and overnight to try to
preserve the bodies longer, but when it came to their
finished models, their goal was never to replicate the look
of a corpse or dead tissue. This is something that
(17:47):
like if you see some wax anatomy models made in
the in in Britain around the same time, some of
them look like that's a model of a corpse. They
really strove for their models to appear lifelike. It came
to things like limbs and hands. The models were positioned
in a way that suggested movement, and at the same
time they also strove for total accuracy and the anatomical
(18:10):
structures that they were representing. This set their work apart
from some of their contemporaries, whose work was sometimes idealized
or allegorical, with sculptors trying to make a model that
was sublime rather than one that was accurate. Something else
that set them apart was their approach to the dissections.
Rather than choosing one region of the body and focusing
on that, they took a systemic approach, dissecting and modeling, say,
(18:34):
all of the parts of the respiratory system as one project.
Marandi and Manzolini's reputations as both anatomists and as model
makers grew very quickly as they worked together. People visited
their home studio during their grand tours of the continent.
They also learned some really high profile commissions for their work.
King Charles Emmanuel the second of Sardinia, King Charles of Naples,
(18:57):
and King Augustus the Third of Poland, a lot with
other monarchs, nobles and statesmen, all commissioned anatomical models from them.
Their models were also commissioned by medical forerunners in Bologna.
Giovanni Antonio Galli commissioned a set of obstetrics models, including
the uterus during pregnancy, for Bologna's first school of obstetrics,
(19:18):
which he opened in his home in seventeen forty nine,
and this involved making models of someone who had died
during pregnancy. The couple also made a set of obstetrics
models and models of the ear for Pierre Paolo Molinelli,
who was Bologna's first chair of practical surgery, so their
work was an important part of both these specialties in
their earliest years in Bologna. Marandi and Manzolini's work as
(19:41):
anatomists also went beyond just making these representative models. They
were learning and making discoveries about anatomy and physiology as
part of their work, and informing others of what they discovered.
For example, on March nine, seventeen forty nine, Manzolini published
a treatise on deafness. Well it didn't credit Mirandi as
a co author. This paper was based on anatomical and
(20:04):
modeling work that the couple did together. Marandi produced the
most accurate and most finely detailed models of the ear
and its associated structures. Some of which are tiny during
her lifetime, so she definitely contributed to this paper, even
though she wasn't named in it. At the time, the
medical community was debating what caused deafness and why most
(20:26):
deaf people also did not speak. Manzolini's paper reported on
a dissection that they had conducted on the body of
someone who had been deaf from birth and also did
not speak. They found no differences in the nerve and
muscle structures involved with speech from what they saw in
the bodies of people who did speak, but they found
that this person's coclea was essentially absent. So Manzolini's paper
(20:50):
concluded that in this case of congenital deafness, the deafness
was the reason for the absence of speech and not
some other anatomical cause. After the Anatomical Museum at the
Institute of Science and Arts was complete, Mirandi also led
tours of the collection for high ranking visitors to the city.
She also tended to be the person who gave tours
(21:11):
and demonstrations of their home studio. In addition to being
her husband's partner and everything related to dissection and modeling,
she was also really the public face of their anatomical
work and their modeling business. Mirandi's life changed significantly in
seventeen fifty five, and we will get to that after
a sponsor break. On to seven five, Giovanni Manzolini died.
(21:43):
He had been seriously ill with some kind of progressive
wasting condition for some time. In some accounts it's described
as tuberculosis, and others it is dropsy, which was usually
used to describe a dima, so this could have been
something like heart failure or a circulatory problem. Mirandi was
forty one at that point and the mother to two sons,
(22:04):
Giuseppa aged ten and Carlo, aged six. She and her
husband had actually had six or eight children together during
their marriage, but these two were the only ones who survived.
Mirandi was well known and highly respected for her work
as both an anatomist and a modeler. At this point,
she had also taken over all of her husband's work
as he became too ill to do it, and she
(22:26):
was faced with a difficult decision. Not long after Manzolini's death,
Catherine the Great, at the time Grand Duchess of Russia
extended an invitation for her to come live at court.
Other monarchs and nobles had done the same. There wasn't
exactly a bidding war, but many of these offers were
motivated by the idea that Mirandi would be available now
(22:47):
that her husband had died. But Mirandi really just doesn't
seem to have wanted to leave Bologna. It doesn't even
appear that she traveled outside of Bologna during her life.
The leadership of Bologna did want her to leave either.
She wasn't just one of their lady scholars, she was
their lady anatomist. If she moved away, they would be
(23:07):
losing both a resource for the study of anatomy and
sort of a tourist attraction. So Pope Benedict the fourteen
granted Mirandi a lifetime stipend of two hundred lira. In
seventeen fifty five, she was also named public Modeler and
Demonstrator of Anatomy at the University of Bologna. Also in
seventeen fifty five, she was inducted as an honorary member
(23:30):
of Clementina Academy of Art. The last woman to be
so inducted before Mirandi was previous podcast subject Rosalba Carrera
thirty five years previously. Mirandi also continued to teach anatomy
in her home, and in early seventeen fifty six she
was given access to as many cadavers and body parts
as she might need for her modeling work from the
Hospital of St. Mary of Death. However, that two hundred
(23:54):
lira was a very small stipend. By comparison, l lay
stipend was twelve hundred lira. Laura Bassie's was about five lira,
and that was probably because she had a university degree
while Mirandi didn't. Additionally, anatomical models were really time and
labor intensive to produce, and Mirandi's commissions often involved multiple
(24:17):
intermediaries along the way. It was not uncommon at all
for the time between the commission and the payment for
her work to be at least two or three years.
So this stipend and her commissions were enough to keep
Mirandi in Bologna, but not enough to let her make
ends meet. On October three, seventeen fifty six, she surrendered
(24:37):
her older son, just Sepate, to an orphanage and relinquished
all her parental rights for him. That was something that
had been arranged almost a year before, because it was
obvious that Mirandi could not make enough money as a
woman in her position to support two children, It really
was not that uncommon for parents to surrender their children
to orphanages at this point, and a little more than
(24:58):
two years later, Jesseppa was adopted by a noble family
who had no air of their own. Randi had been
quite well known before her husband's death, but afterward, her
status as a widow made her even more of a curiosity.
She continued doing dissections and making models at home, with
a particular focus on the hands, the sensory organs, and
(25:19):
the male reproductive system. She wrote a two hundred fifty
page anatomical notebook, which was a handbook of anatomy that
corresponded with her models, along with nine volumes of notes
on her dissections and her models. One thing she doesn't
seem to have kept is extensive notes on the anatomy
of the female reproductive system, possibly because she thought anything
(25:41):
she might contribute to that knowledge would be dismissed as
intuition or something else non scientific because of her sex.
It's kind of speculative, But a number of people have
been like, yeah, she just didn't really comment on like
the uterus or the ovaries, on anything like that at all.
In any detail, while meanwhile she made extensive work of
(26:01):
the male anatomy are the male reproductive anatomy specifically. She
also distanced herself from the idea that she was an artist.
The Academy of Art that she had been inducted into
was part of the Institute of Sciences, like we set
up at the top of the show, and that was
the affiliation that she claimed for herself, which kind of
amuses me because that was technically true, but it did
(26:24):
put the focus on science instead of art. For the
next nine years after her husband's death, Marandi did extensive work.
She secured commissions for model series from the University of Turin,
the Royal Society of London, and nobles and monarchs, including
Catherine the Great. Visitors to her studio included George Gordon
Lord Byron, French astronomer Joseph Jerome de Lalande, and professor
(26:47):
of medicine John Morgan, who helped establish medical education in
the United States. Byron naturally found her focus on the
male reproductive anatomy quite titillating, as did some other commentators.
This period of tense work was interrupted in seventeen sixty four,
when Marandi became seriously ill and had to spend several
months recovering. During those nine years between her husband's death
(27:10):
and her illness, she had created some of the most
detailed and accurate models of some of the body's most
delicate and tiny structures. She had also discovered the course
and attachment of the oblique eye muscle. She also had
continued to improve on the wax formulation and methods that
she and her husband had used. She had sculpted large
(27:30):
scale versions of the eye and ear so she could
show their microscopic structures. She had corrected the work of
early anatomists, and her contemporaries consulted her on subtle anatomical questions.
Germano as Aguidi, one of Bologna's leading anatomy professors, described
her as having astonishing skill both in dissecting and in
(27:51):
creating the wax anatomical figures, and said that she had
become so renowned that quote her name has reached as
far as Moscow. A to this illness, though Mirandi had
a lot of trouble getting back on her feet. On
September three, seventeen sixty five, she asked for an increase
in her honor are Um of an additional two lira
a year. Her pace still would have been less than
(28:14):
Laura Bassie's, and it would have been a third of als,
but that was denied. On May six of the following year,
Mirandi sold her collection of wax models to Senator Count
Girolamo Ranuzi, who eventually published the entirety of her work.
She later moved into his palace to act as a
curator and caretaker for that collection. She sold him her
(28:35):
anatomical library and all of her instruments on April six,
seventeen seventy one. She was permitted to keep using all
of these tools and materials, but any models that she
made from this point were probably made from plaster casts
of her existing work rather than fresh dissections. She also
continued to receive high profile visitors, including Emperor Joseph the
(28:57):
Second of Austria in seventeen sixty nine. I think her
patron was okay with her making wax models in his home,
but not with dissecting cadavers in his home, even though
she had done that in her own home with so
many cadavers over so many years. Anna Mirandi Manzolini died
on July nine, seventeen seventy four, at the age of sixty.
(29:20):
Her will mentions both of her sons. She references the
fact that her older son had been adopted by this
noble family and was going to be coming into an
inheritance from them, so that then, apart from leaving fifty
lira to a servant, she left most of the rest
of her estate to her younger son, who was not
coming into some other fortune. Most of this inheritance, though,
(29:44):
was continuing residuals from the sale of her models and
her library. She was buried at her local church, but
exhumed and moved to Certosa Cemetery outside the city walls
in the nineteenth century. Two years after her death, the
Bonese Senate purchased Marandi's wax works and installed them in
the Anatomical Museum at the Boulonnese Institute of Sciences in
(30:04):
Palazzo Pogi. The Manzolini Room was inaugurated at the institute
in seventeen seventies. Seven er Les ecourches were moved to
make room. Ercole Lay had blocked the installation of work
by anatomists and sculptors he saw as a threat to
his own reputation and legacy, but his death in seventeen
sixty six had removed that obstacle. Just after Mirandi's death,
(30:28):
the center of anatomy and wax modeling and what's now
Italy moved from Bologna to Florence. The Royal Museum of
Natural History open there in seventeen seventy five, with many
of its models made by Felicea Fontana. Clemento Sussini, who
made the first anatomical venus, was also from Florence. Mirandi's
earliest biographers often describe her work primarily in relation to
(30:52):
her husband, as something that she took up and continued
in devotion to him. They also tended to frame her
as an improvisatrice, which was a popular idea at the
time that brilliant women from modest families just sort of
appeared and then spontaneously and naturally evidenced some kind of
major gift in the sciences. It wasn't until more recent
(31:13):
decades that people examined her work on its own without
the idea that it was an extension of her husband
or some kind of specifically feminine random genius. In the
centuries after her death, Mirrandi's wax models changed hands a
few times and eventually fell into disrepair. Much of what
was commissioned for private collectors has since been lost. Her
(31:35):
extensive study of the male reproductive anatomy was lost as well.
Her notes still remain, but not the actual models, but
many of the surviving pieces were extensively restored in advance
of the muse A de Palazzo Pogis reopening in two thousand.
This included Mirandy's life size self portrait in wax, along
with a portrait of her husband. In her self portrait,
(31:58):
she has dressed in the attire fire of a Bullonese
upper class woman, including strings of pearls at her neck
and wrists, and she's shown in the act of dissecting
a human brain. Her husband is depicted in the process
of dissecting a heart. Art critics have noted that this
was a subversion of seventeenth century beliefs about sex and gender,
something that was really being debated during the Enlightenment. One
(32:22):
widespread belief, though, was that women were ruled by their
hearts and their feelings, while men were ruled by their minds,
something that persists today. But these two wax works pair
Mirandi with a brain and her husband with a heart. Eventually, refrigeration,
air conditioning, and adequate supply of cadavers, and the development
(32:43):
of plastics supplanted the wax and anatomical model. Most of
them that still exist today are museum pieces rather than
being used as active instructional tools. However, wax is still
a modeling medium for artists and things like the Madam
Tussaud wax us. I mean, wax is cool. It is.
I've been to the one in New York and I
(33:05):
actually had a lot more fun there than I thought
that I might. I don't know what, I just it's like,
it's a wax museum whatever. But and then there was
a there was a Ghostbusters installation. I don't know if
it's still there, but I was very excited about that.
Uh that was like a day that you and I
were in New York for something and I had a
couple of free hours. Anyway, if you want to learn
(33:28):
more than what we have just talked about, um read
The Lady Anatomist, The Life and Work of Anna Mirandi
Manslini by Rebecca mess Barger. That was one of the
sources for this episode. It goes into more detail about
all kinds of stuff about her life, and it's just
in general, a really interesting book with lots of great footnotes.
If you want other citations in detail, do you have
(33:50):
a little bit of listener mail? I knew, uh this
is from Teagan. This actually came almost a month ago
at this point, but I needed to ask to a
question about it before I read it, and Teagan said
it's fine, please read it. So uh. Teagan says, Dear Tracy,
and Holly Tan has an episode suggestion that I'm going
to skim past. I also couldn't resist writing to you
(34:13):
after hearing your behind the scenes many on Lord Elgin
and the Parth and on Marble's. I am a museum
curator slash educator, and I'm very much in the give
them Back camp and was interested to hear their history.
I visited the British Museum a few years ago with
my husband on our honeymoon, but we didn't stay in
that room very long because I had promised myself I
would turn my work brain off for the day so
(34:34):
that I could enjoy the museum. Of course, I was
still wearing my Museums are not neutral t shirt like
you do. I was amused to see that the British
Museum has pamphlets in that room explaining their position on
not returning the marbles, which were as one sided as
you might imagine. It was uncomfortable to me to see
these pamphlets when they didn't have any such disclaimers with
(34:55):
the many many other artifacts of questionable providence or ownership.
But that's the power of a high profile controversy. I
strongly agree with you about the paternalism aspect of museum collecting.
I can say that the field is absolutely having conversations
that include but if this high profile repatriation happens, then
people will look more closely at the providence of other
(35:16):
things we have. As you can imagine, there are lots
of people within the field who say, yes, that's the point.
No one's goal is to empty museum collections entirely, but
to be more ethical in our practice. Present day professional
standards require museums to do due diligence to ensure that
the people who give or sell them artifacts have good
and clear title. But professional standards don't mean everyone lives
(35:38):
up to them all the time, and of course there
are plenty of museums that have not done the work
to confront the histories of their collections. Last, but not least,
if you're ever interested in a guided visit to the
either gnome at Massachusetts General Hospital, where surgical anesthesia was
first successfully publicly demonstrated in eighteen forty six, I'd be
happy to show you around. UM. I'm very intrigued by
(36:01):
that idea, so maybe I will make a trip into
Boston sometime soon. All the best, Teagan and then um
taken clarifies that it is uh long time, first time emailing,
but Tigan did meet both of us after a live
show in Summerville, UM, after volunteering with headcount. Thank you
(36:23):
so much, Tigan for writing to us today. Thank you
also when I emailed to say, hey, I really love
this email, but also it seems like an email where
people could uh you know, pieceta tails together. We try
to protect people's privacy. UM, she said, please read it. Well,
not please read it, she said, we had her permission
to read it. So thank you Tiggan for that email, UM,
(36:47):
and for having that great insider perspective on what's going
on at museums right now. If you would like to
write to us about this or any other podcast, We're
a history podcast that i heart radio dot com. We're
also all over social media at miss in History. That's
where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Uh.
We used to tell folks in this part that we
(37:08):
had a website with a searchable archive of every episode. Ever,
our website has changed. It's not so searchable anymore. However,
Google has mostly caught up with the shift, so you
can do what I used to do for the old
website to get links for people, which is to google
the episode topic followed by stuff you missed the History Class.
(37:29):
I know it's a little convoluted, but it's still sort
of searchable, just in a different way. And you can
subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart
Radio app, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radios How stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
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heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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Holly Frey
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