Lady Anatomist

The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini

Messbarger Rebecca

Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774), a woman artist and scientist, surmounted meager origins and limited formal education to become one of the most acclaimed anatomical sculptors of the Enlightenment".The Lady Anatomist" tells the story of her arresting life and times, in light of the intertwined histories of science, gender, and art that complicated her rise to fame in the eighteenth century.

Examining the details of Morandi's remarkable life, Rebecca Messbarger traces her intellectual trajectory from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomical wax modeler for the University of Bologna's famous medical school. Placing Morandi's work within its cultural and historical context, as well as in line with the Italian tradition of anatomical studies and design, Messbarger uncovers the messages contained within Morandi's wax inscriptions, part complex theories of the body and part poetry. Widely appealing to those with an interest in the tangled histories of art and the body, and including lavish, full-color reproductions of Morandi's work, "The Lady Anatomist" is a sophisticated biography of a true visionary.

About the Author

Rebecca Messbarger is associate professor in romance languages at Washington University in St. Louis and the co-editor and cotranslator of "The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy", also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"Rebecca Messbarger's sympathetic and insightful account into Anna Morandi Manzolini's life and work, based on a wealth of original research, brings Morandi to life by offering a virtual tour of her arresting vision of the human body. A pleasure to read, 'The Lady Anatomist' allows us to view Morandi's world while taking the reader through the extant corpus of her surviving work including her anatomical writings. This book is a visually stunning project filled with rich illustrations and images that demonstrate the fusion of art and science that characterized the medical community at this time and illustrate the contexts in which Morandi thrived as well as the conditions that prevented her from fully realizing the possibilities of her unique position. Morandi has long deserved to be studied in her own right and Messbarger does that here with equal degrees of passion, skill, and engagement" – Paula Findlen, Stanford University

"In 'The Lady Anatomist', Rebecca Messbarger shakes the dust of historical neglect from Anna Morandi Manzolini's life and reclaims for her the international renown she enjoyed in the eighteenth century. Uncovering Morandi's innovations in the realm of experimental anatomy, Messbarger analyzes the learned lady anatomist's provocative representations of particular body parts in wax within a nuanced cultural history of Bologna's scientific institutions. 'The Lady Anatomist' is a story that needs to be told, filled with new, wonderful, and compelling material" – Londa Schiebinger, author of "Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science"

"This astonishing and greatly informative account... paints a rich canvas of the political, cultural, and scientific life of eighteenth-century Italy and Bologna specifically... May this work have many readers!" – The Journal of Clinical Investigation

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