Anatomical waxes from Florence's La Specola on display at Fondazione Prada

From March 24 to July 17, 2023, the Fondazione Prada, in its Milan location, is hosting the exhibition Anatomical Waxes: The Specola of Florence | David Cronenberg, conceived in collaboration with La Specola, part of the Museum of Natural History and the University of Florence’s Athenaeum Museum System, and Canadian film director and screenwriter David Cronenberg.

The project represents a new stage in the research journey through which Fondazione Prada aims to introduce important collections from ’guest museums,’ to offer unexpected interpretations of cultural heritage and spark a dialogue between a historical collection and a contemporary institution.

Created in 1775 and currently closed to the public for renovations to its historic site, La Specola is one of Europe’s oldest science museums. Inside it houses more than 3.5 million animal exhibits, the world’s largest collection of 18th-century anatomical waxes, and the collection of Sicilian waxmaker Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656-1701). 1,400 items from the extraordinary collection of anatomical waxes were made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to achieve a true didactic-scientific treatise that, without the need to resort to direct observation of a cadaver, aimed to illustrate the anatomy of the human body.

The exhibition at the Prada Foundation has two complementary parts. It brings together thirteen 18th-century ceroplasts from the prestigious collection of the Florentine museum, and a series of seventy-two exhibition copies of anatomical drawings collected in nine showcases. In particular, four reclining female figures are presented, including one of the most important works in La Specola Museum’s collection, the so-called Venus, a rare model with decomposable parts known for its beauty.

An unprecedented short film, made by David Cronenberg in the Specola’s spaces, introduces these four waxes into an alternate dimension, exploring themes such as fascination with the human body and its possible mutations and contaminations. Cronenberg’s film reveals the vital and surprising dimension of ceroplasts with the aim of generating a plurality of new emotional responses, intellectual suggestions and intense reactions.

As David Cronenberg explains, “The wax figures of the Specola were created first and foremost as a didactic tool, capable of revealing the mysteries of the human body to those who could not access the rare anatomical lectures with real cadavers held in universities and hospitals. In their attempt to create partially dissected whole figures, whose body language and facial expression did not show suffering or agony or suggest the idea of torture, punishment or surgery, the sculptors ended up producing living figures seemingly overwhelmed by ecstasy. It was this surprising stylistic choice that captured my imagination: what if it was the dissection itself that induced that tension, that almost religious rapture?”

The project takes the form of a dual intervention: the scientific and artistic narratives take shape in two independent installations created by the creative agency Random Studio. On the second floor of the Podium, waxes from the La Specola museum are displayed following a rigorous museum approach. On the ground floor the same works access the director’s imagination, becoming the protagonists of an enigmatic process of metamorphosis.

For info: https://www.fondazioneprada.org/

Image: Image from the exhibition “Anatomical Waxes: The Specola of Florence | David Cronenberg.” Photo by Roberto Marossi. “Four never-loved women, adrift on an aimless sea, experience the ecstasy of dissection” 2023, film by David Cronenberg

Anatomical waxes from Florence's La Specola on display at Fondazione Prada

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