The Sculptor Who Changed Anatomy
Gaetano Zumbo is credited with the first wax anatomical model. But what if it was an art object the whole time?
The medium of wax is an antivalue, writes Georges Didi-Huberman: a flowing, deflating, oozing shapeshifter falling somewhere between form and formlessness, a polymorphic actor adapting to whatever role it needs to perform in the moment — be it in the theatre of religion, art, or anatomical science.[1] It is never entirely comfortable. It never sits still.
It might seem obvious to think of Gaetano Zumbo’s wax head, the first of its kind, as an anatomical object. The evidence is there: it provides a graphic glimpse into the facial structures underlying the skin, while the brain, split in half with an anatomical saw, is nestled in the confines of an actual human cranium. Zumbo produced the head around 1695, after a bitter fight with his former collaborator, the anatomist Guillaume Desnoues. The Royal Academy of Sciences invited him to present the head (or one just like it) in Paris; when it was eventually listed in the 1749 catalogue of items of Louis XIV’s Cabinet, it was registered as an anatomical object. Today, it finds its home in La Specola, Florence’s Museum of Zoology and Natural History.
