Replicating Venus: Art, Anatomy, Wax Models, and Automata

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

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Wax Models by Gosset

Notes and Queries ◽

10.1093/nq/s7-xi.273.233e ◽

1891 ◽

Vol s7-XI (273) ◽

pp. 233-233

Author(s):

Everard Home Coleman

Keyword(s):

Wax Models

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WAX MODELS OF SKIN LESIONS

The Medical Journal of Australia ◽

10.5694/j.1326-5377.1921.tb60643.x ◽

1921 ◽

Vol 2 (17) ◽

pp. 363-363

Keyword(s):

Skin Lesions ◽

Wax Models

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Wax Models for Florentine Coinage

The British Museum Quarterly ◽

10.2307/4421491 ◽

1933 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 129

Author(s):

G. C. B.

Keyword(s):

Wax Models

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DRIEDIMENSIONAAL NIEUWS

De Moderne Tijd ◽

10.5117/dmt2019.2.002.dekk ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 128-152

Author(s):

Tessel X. Dekker

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Mass Medium ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Reciprocal Relationship ◽

Visual Medium ◽

The Public ◽

Wax Models

THREE-DIMENSIONAL NEWS The Amsterdam wax museum as a competitor of the illustrated newspaper, 1882-1919 The nineteenth-century wax museum can be viewed as a contemporary mass medium that showed people scenes from the news. The Nederlandsch Panopticum was the first of its kind in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam between 1882 and 1919. As an informative visual medium, the Panopticum had to compete with other media, like the illustrated newspaper, for the attention of the public. At the same time, the wax museum also depended on photographs published in these same papers: wax models were often, and in the course of time almost exclusively, modelled after photos. This reciprocal relationship can be seen as an example of ‘intermediality’. In the end, the wax museum lost ground, foremost, to the new mass medium of the time, cinema, which took over both as an urban attraction and as a popular visual medium.

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The ceroplastic collection of the Royal Veterinary School in Madrid: a history waiting to be recovered

Journal of the History of Collections ◽

10.1093/jhc/fhy032 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 291-308

Author(s):

Joaquín Sánchez de Lollano Prieto ◽

Alicia Sánchez Ortiz

Keyword(s):

Royal Veterinary College ◽

Documentary Sources ◽

History Of ◽

Veterinary School ◽

The Creation ◽

Artistic Analysis ◽

Wax Models

Abstract The principal aim of this article is to raise awareness of a collection whose singular nature endows it with enormous heritage value. It presents a historiographical and artistic analysis of the collection of wax models formed at the Royal Veterinary College in Madrid in the period from 1793 to 1863 and currently preserved in the Complutense Veterinary Museum. The data extracted from primary documentary sources, such as the records from the old school which have been preserved, have been verified using secondary bibliography, complemented by scientific observations on the sculptures in question. The results obtained have enabled us to reconstruct the history of the creation and functioning of the ‘Waxworks Laboratory’, to identify the manufacturers and the technical choices they made, to date each model, and to determine the reasons behind the loss of a significant number of them.

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JÜRGEN HELM and ANNETTE WINKELMANN (eds.), Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century. Studies in European Judaism, 1. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. xiv+161. ISBN 90-04-12045-9. $58.00, €49.00 (hardback).

The British Journal for the History of Science ◽

10.1017/s0007087403215119 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 363-365

Author(s):

SACHIKO KUSUKAWA

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Mathematical Science ◽

Economics Of Science ◽

Thomas Dixon ◽

Exotic Animals ◽

Science And Culture ◽

History Of ◽

Personal Reflections ◽

The Cold War ◽

Wax Models

Jürgen Helm and Annette Winkelmann (eds.), Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century. By Sachiko Kusukawa 363Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Discoveries and Enlightenment Culture. By Adrian Johns 365Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris. By E. C. Spary 367Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius. By Rebekah Higgitt 368R. Angus Buchanan, Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. By Ralph Harrington 370Roger Luckhurst and Josephine McDonagh (eds.), Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. By Elizabeth Green Musselman 371Nick Hopwood, Embryos in Wax: Models from the Ziegler Studio. With a Reprint of Embryological Wax Models by Friedrich Ziegler. By Samuel J. M. M. Alberti 372Nicole Hulin, Les Femmes et l'enseignement scientifique. By Cristina Chimisso 373Graham Richards, Putting Psychology in its Place: A Critical Historical Overview. By Roger Smith 374G. C. Bunn, A. D. Lovie and G. D. Richards (eds.), Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and Personal Reflections. By Thomas Dixon 375Nikolai Krementsov, The Cure: A Story of Cancer and Politics from the Annals of the Cold War. By Carsten Timmermann 377Richard Polenberg (ed.), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing. By Charles Thorpe 378G. I. Brown, Invisible Rays: The History of Radioactivity. By Arne Hessenbruch 379E. Roy Weintraub, How Economics Became a Mathematical Science. By I. Grattan-Guinness 380Philip Mirowski and Esther-Mirjam Sent (eds.), Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economics of Science. By Theodore M. Porter 381Stephen P. Turner, Brains/Practices/Relativism: Social Theory after Cognitive Science. By Cornelius Borck 383

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