The Dead in Wax: Aphrodites of the Operating Theater

La Specola is home to a collection of visible women and men, medical teaching aids that comprise some of the finest examples of ceroplasty, the art of modeling anatomical specimens in wax.

La Specola's waxworks are wondrous strange, indeed---a pathological beauty pageant worthy of Cronenberg's wildest dreams. "Le Grazie Smontate,"the "Dissected Graces" of the master modeler Clemente Susini (1754-1814), is a trio of recumbent young women, their tresses spilling over their shoulders, their shapely legs gracefully arranged, the fat, yellow sausages of their intestines coiled neatly on their disemboweled torsos. Gazing languorously up at the viewer, one grace toys girlishly with a braid, her modesty intact despite her bared entrails. Another sloe-eyed beauty flaunts a pert rosebud of a nipple, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that her breast hangs from a flap of flesh peeled back to expose her heart.

[BoingBoing]