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Anna Morandi's wax self-portrait with brain
1Department of Romance Languages, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Progress in Brain Research
|September 18, 2013
Abstract:
In her self-portrait in wax, eighteenth-century Bolognese anatomist and anatomical modeler Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774) represented herself in sumptuous aristocratic dress while dissecting a human brain. This essay explores the scientific and symbolic meaning of the vivid self-portrayal in terms of Anna Morandi's lifework at the intersection of art and anatomical science and within the remarkable cultural context of Enlightenment Bologna that fostered her rise to international acclaim.
