Gaetano Zumbo's anatomical wax model: From skull to cranium

Gaetano Giulio Zumbo's anatomical model of a head, executed in the late seventeenth century and now in Florence's La Specola, is the earliest known life-size wax model for use in study and research. The model conjoins experimental wax techniques with human matter such as hair, teeth and bone, and confronts the observer not only with the interior of the head but also with the face, brutally dissected and in the process of decomposing. By contrast, the back of the head offers an entirely different display, an actual human cranium cut across its upper part and revealing carefully dissected and vibrantly modeled sections of the brain. I argue that the incorporation of the disturbing presence of pain and sensation, usually barred from anatomical imagery, is compounded by the traditional dominance of the face, which continued to trouble attempts to bring physical specificity to the brain. In early modern anatomical research, the importance of the cranium as the container of the brain and the center of the body increasingly displaced the symbolic weight of the face-like skull. Yet the face continued to exert its presence, including through such substitutes as the cross section of the brain projected as a cartographic surface.