Anatomical Venus, Clemente Susini (1790)
The Anatomical Venus lay with her sisters The Slashed Beauties and The Dissected Graces in Florence’s ‘La Specola’ Natural History Museum as a testament to the peculiar sensuality of death and dying. She is finely crafted with human hair, pearls, Venetian glass eyes, while reclining on a bed of silk and velvet.14 And yet, her primary function is to satisfy scientific curiosity. She comes apart piece by piece to reveal intestines, circulatory systems, and most importantly: a tiny fetus, sleeping within her womb. Naturally, I found this incredibly creepy. The funny thing is, I sought her out specifically after seeing some gruesome models of fetuses at the Museo Galileo. I wanted to see just how far thinkers of the Renaissance had pushed the boundaries when exploring death and the human body. As such, I thought the Venus was the perfect embodiment of all kinds of contradictions people grappled with during the Renaissance.
The Venus’s practical use combined with her exquisite beauty struck me as macabre and perverse, but she was seen as the pinnacle of faith, science and art in her day. Dozens of Venus replicas were created, each attempting to outdo the other is beauty and realism. In Christianity, the human body was considered a statement of God and, thus, holy. The Venus represented a way for humans to explore an idealized version of God’s creation while ending the (sinful) need for dissecting cadavers. 15
14. Ebenstein, J. (2014) The birth of venus. The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. 66-83.
15. Ebenstein, J.
A Death in Tuscany 
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