Fembio Special: Famous Italian Women
Anna Morandi
(married name: Anna Morandi Manzolini)
born on January 21, 1714 in Bologna
died on July 9, 1774 in Bologna
Italian anatomist and wax sculptor
250th anniversary of her death on July 9, 2024
Biography
Her sensational accomplishments in the 18th century - during the Age of Enlightenment, an era which was actually not very enlightened - met with disapproval. Anna Morandi Manzolini had entered with self-confidence into a male domain, and had succeeded. She dissected over a thousand cadavers, preserved individual organs and skeletal parts, and produced lifelike anatomical wax models for educational purposes. She became the most famous anatomical wax sculptor in Bologna, which was then the European center for anatomy and wax sculpture. She gave lectures on anatomy; her wax models were purchased by the top addresses in Europe; her workshop was a stop on the Grand Tour, the educational tour of the European nobility. Though she had never attended a university, she felt no need to modestly hide her skills behind those of her husband and colleagues.
Nevertheless, Anna Morandi and her contributions to medicine and wax art were almost forgotten after her death. Even during her lifetime, she earned more recognition abroad and in other Italian cities than in her home town. In the somewhat elitist atmosphere of Bologna – and in the opinion of those who came after her - Anna Morandi was considered neither a doctor nor an artist, but “only” a talented craftswoman.
Virtually nothing is known about her life as a child and teenager. She was born in 1714 to Rosa Giovannini and Carlo Morandi in modest circumstances in Bologna and lived with her mother and younger brother until her marriage. Where she learned to read Latin, to use scientific methods and to master the art of wax modeling is a mystery to this day. She must have learned painting, as praise of her excellent copies of famous masters as well as of the quality of her own paintings can be found in historical documents.
In 1740, at the age of 26, Anna Morandi married the anatomist and wax sculptor Giovanni Manzolini. The couple had eight children; five died at an early age, and a sixth at the age of eleven. Only two sons — Giuseppe and his brother Carlo, who was four years younger —reached adulthood.
The Archbishop of Bologna Prospero Lambertini (from 1740 Pope Benedict XIV), who had a penchant for culture and science, had set up an anatomy museum in the Istituto delle Scienze with an exhibition of life-size anatomical wax figures in order to promote science and research. Previously, the public dissection of the bodies of criminals in the Archiginnasio of the university during the carnival season had served this purpose, but the event had been primarily a social spectacle conducted in a set, quasi-religious ceremony with the public purchasing tickets to the “show” of the ritualized execution of the criminal. The wax models in the anatomy museum - athletic, muscular male figures – were fashioned mainly in accordance with the artistic and aesthetic aspects of the prevailing zeitgeist. Thus, in both cases, the concern was more for morality and pathos than for science.
Giovanni Manzolini worked as an anatomist and anatomical sculptor in the anatomy museum. Among other projects, he was involved in Benedict XIV's major commission for eight realistic depictions of a woman and a man, whose anatomy was to be shown in all layers from the muscles to the skeleton. The skeletal parts were made of real bones, while the soft tissue was reproduced in wax. However, Manzolini believed his reputation and accomplishments would suffer under the project manager Ercole Lelli, who was a devotee of heroic figures and not too particular about anatomy; he therefore left the institution in 1746 and opened a rival business in his own home. The wax model studio was to attract interested laypeople and to serve as an anatomy school for medical students.
Anna Morandi was at his side from the very beginning. It is not known whether she already had prior knowledge of cadaver dissection and the art of wax modeling or whether she first learned these skills from Giovanni Manzolini. However, it is said that she quickly surpassed her husband in dissection and the production of wax models. She was also the one who held regular anatomy lessons and used practical demonstrations on wax models to explain the position and function of human organs. Unlike women of the time in the arts or sciences, she was neither subservient nor modest. She documented the findings of her dissections in an anatomical notebook, recording each in meticulous detail and noting that it had been “performed by Anna Morandi, citizen of Bologna and honorary professor at the Academy of the Institute of Sciences of Bologna.”
The business started well, with the first major order coming from Giovanni Antonio Galli, who trained midwives and surgeons in obstetrics at the University of Bologna. He initially ordered twenty of a total of 170 planned wax models. These were to show the female reproductive organs and the uterus at various stages of pregnancy. Order after order followed. Anna Morandi was particularly interested in the skeleton and skeletal development from fetus to adult human - she devoted 22 panels with replicas and 62 pages in her notebook to the topic - as well as in the sensory organs ear, eye, mouth, nose and hand (as a tactile organ).
The couple brought anatomy and wax modeling out of the realm of myth and aesthetics and into reality. They dissected hundreds of cadavers with the “supply” from the Santa Maria della Morte hospital having to be “processed” quickly due to a lack of cooling facilities. They practiced anatomy and physiology on a scientific basis, wrote analyses of their findings and recorded everything in writing. Their approach was systematic and not limited to individual organ parts. They removed entire anatomical systems from the cadaver as a unit and examined them for position, form, structure and function. Only thereafter were the individual organs in a system dissected down to the smallest detail, thereby ensuring that organs could be viewed both individually and within their wider context. Whenever this work led Anna Morandi to observations that differed from prevailing anatomical theories, she did not hesitate to voice her critique even when it was directed towards famous luminaries.
The Morandi-Manzolini house became a magnet for medical students and educational travelers across Europe; there was in all probability no better place to receive such thorough training in human anatomy. “Fresh” organs were available for dissection, and the large collection of wax models made it possible to teach without the stench of corpses and decomposing, rotting organs. Anna Morandi in particular liked to use wax replicas in her lessons because she could use them to explain even the smallest body parts which would otherwise be difficult to see or could quickly decompose as “real” body parts. Her wax models were based on the actual human model, not on contemporary aesthetic ideals.
Anna Morandi and Giovanni Manzolini received prestigious commissions not only from Bologna, but also from various European royal houses and the Royal Society in London, among others. Letters from domestic and foreign travelers praised the studio of “Signora Anna,” who represented the couple’s company to the outside world. In addition to her anatomical models, she created a wax portrait of her husband and a self-portrait, which shows her dressed in elegant clothing and holding a scalpel and tweezers over a human brain. The wax portrait is still in good condition today; only the scalpel and tweezers have since been lost.
Giovanni Manzolini died of tuberculosis on June 7, 1755. Anna Morandi was left with her ten- and six-year-old sons and the workshop at home. Although she was determined to continue the work alone, she then needed to cover all the expenses on her own. She received several offers to teach at universities abroad. Tsarina Catherine II of Russia, who had long been an admirer of Anna Morandi's art, invited her to come to St. Petersburg and to bring with her the studio and all of its inventory. Anna Morandi, however, preferred to remain in Italy and therefore chose to request financial support from the city council.
Pope Benedict XIV, anxious to keep her in Bologna, arranged for the city council to pay her an honorarium and for the university senate to grant her a symbolic annual salary of 300 lire and appoint her as an official public wax sculptor and dissector. Teaching continued to take place in her private rooms, but her working conditions improved. An additional positive development was Benedict XIV's decree that dissection undertaken for scientific purposes was for the public good, did not represent the desecration of a corpse, and therefore did not result in excommunication. However, her financial situation remained so precarious that in 1756 she decided to place Giuseppe in an orphanage and renounce her parental rights to him.
Papal support further enhanced her fame and reputation - among others, she was received by Emperor Joseph II of Austria, who offered her a professorship at the University of Milan, which at the time was part of the Habsburg Empire. A second offer from Catherine II, which would have relieved her of all material worries, could not entice Anna Morandi away from Bologna.
In the period that followed, she focused on improving the quality of her wax models in terms of accuracy and durability, and on completing her anatomical work: a series of wax replicas – a kind of three-dimensional anatomical atlas – and accompanying text on two main topics: the sensory organs and the male urogenital area. Among other things, she created a series of eyes looking in different directions, and included dissected eyelids, corneas, retinas, lacrimal glands, tear ducts, surrounding muscles and nerves as well as microscopically small components that she was the first to discover. She is also famous for an oversized ear, enlarged so as to make even the smallest components clearly visible.
The highlight of her work was a series of 22 wax models and 47 pages of scientific notes on the male urogenital system and genitals, which has been “overlooked” by posterity, probably not only because all 22 wax models have disappeared without a trace. With her detailed examination of the components and functions of the male reproductive system, Anna Morandi turned the prevailing gender order completely on its head; until then it had been customary for men to usurp the female reproductive system in theory and practice resulting in their finding that a woman’s intellectual ability was naturally limited by her child-bearing capability and by her “lustful” uterus. The dominance of the man was explained by the active role of the sperm, imbued with life force and an ennobling spirit, in fertilization. Anna Morandi recorded and described the structure and function of the entire male urogenital system in meticulous detail; however, she was unable to discover an “ennobling spirit.” It is therefore not surprising that she and her work became the focus of misogynist diatribes.
Despite the support she had received, her finances remained strained. For the first time, she seriously considered moving and selling her collection of wax models. In 1769, even before her negotiations with the Russian Tsarina had become more concrete, she accepted the offer of the Bolognese senator Count Girolamo Ranuzzi to buy her collection - including a life-size skeleton and her self-portrait - and to offer her a wing in his palazzo where she could live and teach. Dissections of cadavers, of course, would not be possible. She agreed, and Ranuzzi eventually bought her entire library as well as her tools and instruments, including those she had recently developed for obstetrics. Ranuzzi’s motives were not entirely altruistic; he was then able to bathe in the splendor of his roommate as well as to establish contacts with her numerous domestic and foreign visitors.
She died at the age of 60 and before she was able to publish her Catalogo dei preparati anatomici, a scientific description of the human organs she had dissected that included corrections of the occasional errors made by her “colleagues.” She bequeathed most of her inheritance, mainly claims from her sale to the Count, to her younger son Carlo. Giuseppe had been adopted by the noble Solimei family after two years in the orphanage and had been named their heir.
Eight months after her death, Count Ranuzzi sold her entire inventory to the Bologna Senate - at a profit of more than 30%. The collection eventually went to the Istituto delle Scienze, where it was exhibited for the first time in 1777 in the institute's museum in Palazzo Poggi. It can still be seen there today.
(Text from 2017; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
Quotes
We have shown two hands expressing those delicate and painful sensations that come from touching with the palms or being touched on the palms [...] in natural harmony with the characteristics of the objects they touched. Therefore, here we demonstrate the inner parts of the hand by stripping off its outer sheaths to see the muscles, tendons, nerves, fascia, etc. (from Anna Morandi's anatomical notebook)
Anna Morandi visualizes the whole human body, she preserves the durable body parts that can be kept and reproduces the non-durable ones in wax, so that anyone who visits her studio receives from her useful explanations of all the bones of the body, as she has kept numerous skeletons of different ages to show the differences between them. She then demonstrates all the muscles of the arms and feet, which she has molded in wax according to nature. She also demonstrates the parts of the eye, ear, nose, vocal organs and other parts that she has either kept or reproduced in wax with realistic colors, and gives learned explanations of their location and function. (from a traveler's letter to the Florentine journal Novelle letterarie, 1754)
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