Women, Wax, and Anatomy

Chapter 4 follows Anna Morandi’s activities after her husband’s death, reconstructing the setting in which she consolidated her role as a celebrity and recipient of papal patronage. It situates Morandi’s waxworks within a diversified world of wax modelling that was characterized by patterns of continuity and discontinuity among devotional, artistic, and anatomical displays. Moreover, it reads the pope’s patronage of Morandi against the backdrop of his concerns for the authenticity of claims of divine inspiration in the context of saint-making. Likewise, it juxtaposes Morandi’s activities with those of Laura Chiarini, a Bolognese nun whose abilities as a wax modeller were taken to be the measure of her divine inspiration. It suggests that while Chiarini’s wax modelling performances represented a model of inspiration that was carefully scrutinized, Morandi’s activities as an anatomist and a trustworthy modeller of nature instantiated an example of female accomplishment that met with papal approval.