Anatomical Waxes: La Specola di Firenza

An image-text dialogue between David Cronenberg’s vision of the human body and wax models from a legendary Italian science museum

This book was published for an exhibition at Fondazione Prada, where the models of La Specola Museum (part of the Museum of Natural History in Florence) were exhibited alongside a newly conceived short film by Canadian film director David Cronenberg. It includes interviews with the director and an anthology of previously published texts on La Specola's collection and Cronenberg's filmography by Maria Luisa Azzaroli, Fausto Barbagli, Mario Bucci, Gianni Canova, Simone Contardi, Eleanor Crook, Francesco Paolo de Ceglia, Georges Didi-Huberman, Joanna Ebenstein, Giovanni Festa, Marcie Frank, Mauro Giori, John Hatch, Zoltan Kádár, Peter K. Knoefel, Chloe Anna Milligan, Marta Poggesi, Mario Praz, Dylan Trigg and Marcos Uzal, among others. The contributions examine the remarkable heritage and the current resonance of the wax models from historical, academic and artistic perspectives, and investigate David Cronenberg’s vision of the body, to underline the relevance of scientific research and its connection to creative practice.