Oral presentations

From Flesh to Form – From Studio to Specimen: Artistic Anatomy and Scientific Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice

Throughout the centuries, artists and scientists have been fascinated by the human body and the natural world, seeking to represent it in two and three dimensions. The need to create scientific and didactic illustrations—to understand and disseminate knowledge—has therefore fostered a union between art and science that has developed over time.

A particular drawing method, taught for several years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), is “Struttura Uomo”, which is strictly inductive and analytical. The approach to reproducing the human body is completely reversed, inverting the representative method by proceeding from inside to outside.

The intention of this course is to expand the student’s ability to see, understand, and represent the human body in its spatial, volumetric, and sculptural dimensions. It emphasizes that the role of an Academy of Fine Arts is not to teach how to copy forms, but to train the gaze—to “see inside the form” and “see-through”—as taught by the Venetian school in the “Visione Trasparente” (“Transparent View”).

Within the tradition of fine arts academies, copying and direct observation of original works have always been essential components of academic training. This practice is even more significant in the field of Scientific Illustration, where direct observation of natural specimens and living models—often preserved in scientific museums and botanical gardens—represents an irreplaceable element of learning.

Since 2022, thanks to the collaboration and availability of museum staff, students enrolled in the Scientific Illustration course have had the opportunity to visit the scientific museums of the University of Padua annually. This collaboration has gone beyond traditional guided visits, giving rise to specialized workshops and study days dedicated to drawing from life. This relationship, still in its early stages, was further consolidated in 2025 through a formal agreement between the University Museum Centre (Centro di Ateneo per i Musei, CAM) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, aiming to enhance a shared educational heritage that enables students to become more aware, creative, and capable of communicating science through art.

Biography

Roberta Ballestriero obtained her European PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. Since 2004, she has lectured in Art History at several British universities and currently serves as Art Historian in residence at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, London. She teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and collaborates with the University of the Arts, London.

She is a Scientific Member of the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Bioarchaeology (FAPAB) Research Centre in Avola, Syracuse, and an Honorary Member of the Bologna Surgical Medical Society.

Her research explores the intersection of art and science, with a particular focus on the art of ceroplastics/wax modelling over the centuries. This includes anatomical models, portraits, ex-votos, wax sketches, and contemporary art. She founded and presided over the first international congresses on wax modelling in forty years (London 2017, Padua 2019, Mexico City 2025) and has edited the volumes Ceroplastics, The Art of Wax (2019) and Ceroplastics, The Science of Wax (2021).

Medical Art – Observation and Techniques for the Medical Artist

Medical artistry has long been a source of inspiration and wonder. Core skills—rooted in careful observation and strong drawing ability—remain as essential today as in the past. This practice involves studying form, skeletal structures, and anatomy, while refining traditional art techniques, all with the goal of producing artwork with specific medical or educational purposes. By combining scientific understanding with artistic skill, medical artists translate complex anatomical knowledge into visually engaging and accurate representations that communicate, educate, and inspire.

Biography

Joanna Cameron is an artist and author with a lifelong passion for medical art, specializing in drawing, pen and ink, watercolour, and printmaking. She is the author of Medical Art – Principles and Techniques for the Creative Artist (2025).

Shortly after graduating in Medical Art from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1988, she was invited to serve as Honorary Secretary of the Medical Artists’ Association Education Committee. She later supported the Medical Artists’ Education Trust as Director of Education from 2006 to 2022 and was awarded an MAA Fellowship in 2013 for her longstanding contributions to the MAET Charitable Trust. She now teaches the MAET Advanced Foundation Programme, focusing on drawing and observation, and became Chair of the Medical Artists’ Association of Great Britain (MAA) in 2025.

Beyond medical art, Joanna is passionate about the natural world. She wrote and illustrated the Wildlife and Nature Notes and the Heritage series (2019–2023), and most recently initiated and illustrated Glimpses of Wilderness (2025), a study of Fairmile Common in Surrey.

Inventing a canon. Artistic choices and strategies in order to properly represent the anatomised body in Vesalio’s Fabrica

This paper examines the artistic strategies through which a visual canon of the anatomized body is constructed in Vesalius’s Fabrica, highlighting the interplay between art and scientific knowledge in early modern anatomical representation. Vesalius’s key innovation lay in unifying roles traditionally kept separate, enabling the direct study of the human body through dissection.

A central challenge, however, was the effective visual communication of anatomical knowledge, given the absence of an established aesthetic tradition for representing the dissected body and the cultural sensitivities surrounding it. Through collaboration with an artistic milieu that remains only partially identified, Vesalius developed a visual strategy combining anatomical precision with established artistic conventions.

Anatomized figures were often posed after classical statuary, such as the Belvedere Torso, allowing for aesthetically mediated and culturally acceptable depictions. References to antiquity and Christian imagery further framed these bodies as expressive and meaningful rather than inert, situating them within a broader symbolic context—a strategy that would become canonical in anatomical illustration for centuries.

Biography

Eleonora Del Riccio is an art historian specializing in Early Modern art, with a PhD from Sapienza University of Rome in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis. Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring the intersections of art and science, with particular focus on artistic anatomy and the medical humanities in Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

She has presented her work at international conferences, including meetings of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), and has contributed to peer-reviewed publications and edited volumes.

In addition to her academic work, she has professional experience in curatorial practice and cultural institutions, serving as Exhibitions and Content Curator at a contemporary art gallery in Rome, and holding positions at the Venetian Heritage Foundation, the Vatican Museums, Christie’s, and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica. She is currently engaged in library cataloguing and inventory management at the Biblioteca Lancisiana, within the monumental complex of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome.

From Dissection to Preservation: The Art and Science of a new method of Embalming

Soft-embalming techniques, including Thiel-based methods and contemporary modifications, have the ability to transform cadaver-based medical education by preserving tissue flexibility, color, and life-like handling characteristics. Compared to fresh/frozen or traditional formalin fixation specimens, soft-prep cadavers can serve as a specialized solution that supports both gross anatomy education and advanced skills training, including clinically applied dissection, ultrasound-guided procedures, and surgical simulation.

This presentation reviews the evolution of soft-prep techniques, key material and workflow considerations, and institutional uses. We will review the educational advantages and limitations of traditional, fresh, and soft-prep methods, including issues of preservation, storage, and long-term usability.

As anatomical training becomes increasingly procedural and clinically integrated, the visual language of anatomy must evolve. While soft-prep methods offer pedagogical advantages, shifts in anatomical practice and curriculum take time. Formalin fixation and fresh-frozen tissue has shaped anatomical education for more than 150 years, and any broader transition toward soft-prep utilization will likely be gradual. Thoughtful integration of these methods invites new approaches to illustration, procedural visualization, and clinically applied anatomical education.

Biography

Marcelo Oliver, MFA, is a medical illustrator and founder of Body Scientific International. With over 30 years of experience in medical publishing, device innovation, and anatomical model development, his company’s work appears in more than 100 textbooks worldwide. He collaborates internationally with medical schools and surgical training centers on soft-embalming techniques and clinically applied anatomy education. Serving in leadership within the Association of Medical Illustrators, he advocates for inclusive, visually accurate medical education and for recognizing medical artists as vital members of interdisciplinary teams advancing medical education, health communication, health equity, and new medical technologies.

Under the Knife. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joannes van Buyten (1648) as a Unique Source of Information about Surgery Lessons in Early Modern Antwerp

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joannes van Buyten, now preserved in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA, inv. no. 610), is an impressive group portrait depicting surgeons attending an anatomy lesson. Commissioned in 1648 by the Antwerp surgeons’ guild, the painting was executed by the portrait specialist Frans Denys. It is the only known representation of this subject produced in the Southern Netherlands.

Beyond its art-historical significance, the work holds exceptional value for the history of medicine. Denys’s painting constitutes a major visual testimony to the practice of anatomy lessons within the framework of surgical apprenticeship in seventeenth-century Antwerp. Nineteen surgeons are portrayed within a real anatomy theatre, whose octagonal structure shapes the composition and spatial organization of the scene. The architectural setting is likely a faithful representation of Antwerp’s anatomy theatre.

As an iconographic source, when considered alongside seventeenth- and eighteenth-century archival documents, the painting offers important insight into the composition and functioning of the surgeons’ guild, as well as into the organization and conditions of surgical instruction in Early Modern Antwerp.

Biography

Beatrijs Wolters van der Wey studied Classical Philology, Art History and Healthcare Management and Policy at the University of Antwerp (UFSIA) and at KU Leuven, where she obtained her PhD in Art History in 2012. Her doctoral dissertation on civic group portraits in the historic Duchy of Brabant in the early modern period was awarded the Erik Duverger Prize by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in 2013.

From 2004 to 2018 she was attached to the Documentation Department of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels and held various teaching positions. She currently teaches at the Kunsthistorisch Instituut Antwerpen vzw and serves as Chair of its Executive Board.

As an independent scholar, she publishes on sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Flemish painting, with particular attention to the contextualisation of works of art and to material culture in general.

Audiences and Anatomical Learning after Vesalius’s Fabrica

Audiences played a pivotal role in shaping anatomical learning in Early Modern Europe, particularly during Andreas Vesalius’s demonstrations at Padua and Bologna. 

While recent scholarship has illuminated some aspects of this relationship, significant gaps remain, largely due to fragmentary evidence regarding what audiences actually experienced and how they engaged with public and private anatomical inquiry. 

This paper surveys the existing evidence on audiences, exploring their diverse roles in structuring anatomical demonstrations and their influence on the dissemination of knowledge. Caron argues that anatomical learning cannot be understood solely through printed texts or the work of individual scholars; it was also shaped by the expectations, expertise, and participation of live audiences. 

By examining how audiences familiar with Vesalius’s Fabrica influenced the conduct and presentation of dissections, this study highlights the dynamic interplay between printed knowledge and performative practice, showing that anatomical understanding was as much a social as an intellectual process.

Biography

Louis Caron has a deep passion for early modern European history and completed his graduate studies at Cambridge University. His research focuses on the history of European thought, with particular interest in the intersections of medicine, science (or natural philosophy), and political and religious ideas.

He currently teaches at the Crane Country Day School in the United States, helping students think critically about the past and engage with political concepts. Alongside teaching, he continues to research and publish on European intellectual history and considers himself privileged to be invited to speak at this conference.

Vesalius’s Epitome (1543): The Illustrations and an Early Proof Impression

Andreas Vesalius’s Epitome, a brief illustrated summary of anatomy, is described by the author as a compendium of the books of the Fabrica in two parts. These are comprised of a short text and a set of eleven woodcut illustrations, two leaves of which were meant to be cut-up with the resulting pieces glued together to create flap-anatomy manikins of both genders. The Epitome’s reader is invited to start either with the text or the illustrations. This choice is an indication of the autonomous nature of the text and images, for unlike the Fabrica, there are no references to the illustrations in the Epitome text. The text was repeatedly copied in the 16th and 17th centuries, often packaged with a selection of illustrations after the Fabrica and the male and female nudes of the Epitome. This talk will consider the illustrations of the Epitome and the history of the woodblocks in light of a newly identified proof impression of the Epitome’s male nude figure, printed without its surrounding text. A consideration of its provenance and an analysis of the wear of the related woodblock through later printings establishes that this proof impression is an early one, possibly one made for Vesalius himself in the course of the preparation of the Epitome. Vesalius worked from proof prints as well as drawings when writing about the illustrations of the Fabrica and the Epitome, and a set of proofs interleaved with the woodblocks was sent as a guide to his printer, Johannes Oporinus in Basel, with a request that he follow them closely.

Biography

Monique Kornell is an art historian whose scholarship explores the dynamic relationship between art, anatomy, and the history of medicine from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. She is Honorary Director of the Program in the History of Medicine at the Center for the Arts and Humanities in Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she also serves as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and convenes the 2025–26 seminar series The Book in the History of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. from the Warburg Institute, University of London, following graduate study at the Courtauld Institute of Art and a B.A. with distinction from the University of Toronto; she also completed anatomy training for artists at University College London.

Kornell has held fellowships and research appointments at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles, and served as Guest Curator at the Getty Research Institute. There she curated Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy (2022), with a new iteration forthcoming at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2026). A leading authority on Andreas Vesalius, her publications examine print culture, illustration, and anatomical knowledge, illuminating how books and images shaped medical understanding across early modern Europe.

Connecting Art and Anatomy in Italy

The Italian peninsula offers a unique story, as its medieval universities established the study of human anatomy for physicians, later serving as the cradle of the Renaissance. The profound connection between art and science in Italy is beautifully illustrated by Michelangelo: the wooden crucifix he carved in gratitude for secret access to corpses from a convent hospital still hangs in the Basilica of Santo Spirito in Florence.

This talk explores the nexus between art and science in Italy, examining the history of anatomy education in the first universities, discussing how Renaissance masters clandestinely conducted dissections to enhance their art, and considering how that knowledge influenced some of the world’s greatest artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. 

Participants will reframe Renaissance masterpieces within the context of human dissection, analyze the influence of Renaissance art on early anatomy texts, and compare and contrast the accuracy of early anatomy texts with the anatomical representations of select Renaissance masters.

Biography

Kevin Petti, PhD is a dual United States of America/Italian citizen, college professor, textbook coauthor, and president-emeritus of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society. He teaches anatomy and physiology, human dissection, and health and human behavior at San Diego Miramar College, and leads study-abroad programs across Italy and Europe through the Anatomia Italiana program he founded in 2012, exploring the origins of anatomy as a science and its influence on Renaissance masters. His students include anatomy professors, physicians pursuing continuing education, and undergraduates from San Diego State University.

Petti is an invited speaker on the connection between art and anatomy in Greco-Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance Italy at international conferences, museums, Italian-American groups, and universities throughout North America and Europe. He has been invited by the Italian government to speak at their Cultural Institutes in the United States of America and at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The University of Palermo, Sicily, hosted him as a guest lecturer for its 210th-anniversary seminar series, and he was featured in the eight-part Chinese Central Television (CCTV) documentary, 200 Years of Surgery.

Itinerant Bodies: Anatomy and Medicine at the Fairground, Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries

One of the staple attractions of the nineteenth-century funfair was the popular anatomy museum. These venues revealed the secrets of human anatomy alongside the grotesque sights of deviant and sick bodies. This paper presents a short history of these museums and the objects and people behind them. Focusing on the performative and material dynamics of these exhibitions, I argue that they played an important role in the broader circulation of medical knowledge.

While spectacle and artistry were key to attracting visitors, these itinerant cabinets were often assembled from the same makers and objects as institutional collections. Wax modellers, in particular, appear as central figures in producing and mediating anatomical objects, bridging professional medicine and public entertainment. The presence of anatomical museums at the fairground also signalled the event’s potential as a civilized and morally acceptable form of leisure.

As academic medicine professionalized, tensions between the spectacle of the funfair and the moral contemplation encouraged by these cabinets grew, ultimately contributing to their decline. Although this history formally ended by the First World War, its legacies persisted well into the twentieth century.

Biography

Gitte Samoy is a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp, where she is a member of the Arts & Media Archaeology team at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts and participates in the ERC-funded project Science at the Fair (www.scifair.eu). She holds a Master’s in History from the Catholic University of Leuven and a Master’s in African Studies from the University of Ghent.

Her doctoral research, titled Spectacular Bodies: Performing Anatomy, Medicine and Anthropology, examines the circulation of knowledge about the body at funfairs in Northwestern Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She focuses on the role of materiality and performative strategies in shaping ideas about health and disease, disability, gender, class, and race, and explores how these notions were reinforced or challenged through the fairground experience.

Vernacular Anatomy: A Sixteenth-Century Yiddish Translation of Vesalius’s Epitome

This presentation examines a previously understudied manuscript preserved in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (LJS 485): a Yiddish translation of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica librorum epitome (1543). Written in Ashkenazi script, the manuscript provides rare evidence of Jewish engagement with Renaissance anatomical knowledge and of the transmission of Vesalian ideas beyond a Latin-literate readership.

The existence of such a vernacular translation raises important questions. Who produced this text, and for whom was it intended? What role could anatomical knowledge assume within Jewish communities, where dissection was prohibited by religious law? By situating this Yiddish Epitome within the broader landscape of vernacular medical translation, the paper contributes to current scholarship on the cross-cultural transmission of anatomical knowledge in early modern Europe.

Biography

Daniella Zaidman-Mauer is a scholar of Early Modern and Modern Yiddish literature and vernacular medical texts, focusing on how Jewish communities in Europe engaged with healing knowledge and epidemics. 

She earned her PhD at the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School of Historical Studies) with a dissertation titled: Plague and Piety. Yiddish Medical Literature in Early Modern Europe.

She teaches at the University of Amsterdam and Bar-Ilan University.