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the Anatomical Venus
This piece belongs to a collection of more than 200 anatomical
models that, as they represent distinct aspects of normal,
pathological and comparative anatomy of the human body, are
preserved in the Museum. The Venus has been a recent acquisition
in the Museum, coming from the Department of Human Anatomy
and Embryology of the Faculty of Medicine of the University
of Barcelona. Upon the 600th anniversary commemorative exhibition
of the Santa Creu i Sant Pau´s Hospital, the restoration
team of the City Museum, led by Montserrat Pugès and
Laia Fernández, was able to improve the state of conservation
of the Venus with outstanding results.
It is difficult to set exactly the origin and manufacturing
date of this piece, though we must doubtlessly place it in
the 19th Century. It was in the first decades of that century
that anatomical Venuses became extremely popular in some European
museums of anatomy. This is due to the fact that the exhibition
of whole-body anatomical figures allowed knowledge popularisation,
without any effort by the observer, through a precise representation
of Nature. These elements can be found in the Anatomical Venus,
which shows an evident external beauty, combined with anatomical
rigor of internal components, yielded by the medical knowledge
acquired through dissectional practice. In fact, the carrying
out of anatomical models through different materials always
harbours to two basic aims regarding pedagogical and, in a
lesser way, artistic or aesthetic aspects. The persistence
over time of this form of artificial representation of human
anatomy reminds us of the complementary role of pedagogical
comprehension that these models had in faculties of medicine,
where the expert anatomist directed the work of the modeller
artist.
In the case of the Anatomical Venus, two objectives come together:
education and entertainment. Through an intense realism, the
woman we find is lying in a resting position and invites the
viewer to come closer. Female nudity constituted a pretext
for public exhibition while avoiding moral incorrectness and
attracting a greater number of observers. As in other resembling
models preserved in European museums, such as in Vienna or
Florence, the resting woman is pregnant and allows access
to her body’s inside through successive dissections
all the way to the foetus. The aim to instruct a wide segment
of non-expert public was achieved from a representation of
Nature, utterly live and natural, based on the construction
of a kind of perfect human body, that of Venus’ beauty.
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© Official Medical Association of Barcelona 
