Paolo Mascagni nel secolo delle cose. I modelli in cera fra strumento didattico, arte e divulgazione scientifica

The essay sets Paolo Mascagni's wax models in the context of a new Eighteenth Century culture of 'objects'. While the rise of anatomical models was aimed at popularizing science and improving medical training, it was often entangled with the spectacularization of wax anatomies, as the case of Chovet in England illustrates. The visualization of anatomical knowledge imported in La Specola presupposed, on the one hand, a new epistemology based on aesthetics, and, on the other, an aestheticization of medical information whose import is still visible today in many contemporary artists, who reinterpret Mascagni's scientific specimen as artistic objects.