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Rebecca Messbarger (BA ’83) shines light on the life of an 18th-century artist


Waxing anatomical


By ANASTASIA BUSIEK


well lost to history by the time Rebecca Messbarger (BA ‘83), PhD, came across it. Messbarger, a cultural historian, came across Morandi’s name in her dissertation research and was determined to return to the subject. Messbarger is now a professor of Italian; History; and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. She recently published The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini. Morandi, a trained artist, married Giovanni Manzolini,


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a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, in 1736. She aided him in his work of creating anatomical wax models, which were made for educational purposes. By the time her husband passed away in 1755, leaving her a single mother of two children, Morandi was an expert anatomist and wax modeler, and so she carried on her husband’s work—even securing a teaching post at the University of Bologna.


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lthough the work of 18th-century anatomi- cal sculptor Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–74) was commissioned in its time by such notable figures as Catherine the Great, it had been fairly


SPRING 2014


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