Born the year the University of Bologna opened, not that long after Laura Bassi, Anna Morandi was one of the protagonists of a cultural and social reform that took place exclusively in Bologna, albeit briefly. This was the century of the female lecturer. Anna Morandi took up a professorship to impart notions of anatomy and, above all, to advance the knowledge of doctors through her wax works. Her husband Giovanni Manzolini taught her the special art of wax modelling, and she soon became famous for the unique scientific precision of her artefacts.
Anna Morandi was born in Bologna in 1714 to a family of modest economic means. Nevertheless, she was able to study drawing and sculpture at the ateliers of Giuseppe Pedretti and Francesco Monti, where she met Giovanni Manzolini, her future husband.
The two married in 1740 and had eight children, of whom only two lived long enough to come of age.
Manzolini, who specialised in the art of wax modelling, joined the studio of Ercole Lelli, his old companion at the Accademia Clementina, in 1742 as a collaborator. The Bolognese pontiff Benedict XIV had asked for numerous wax artefacts to be produced for the anatomical teachings of the Accademia delle Scienze set up in the city's Institute.
In those days, Lelli was the undisputed champion of this ancient art, which had been used since Leonardo’s time to study and reproduce the human body and which the Bolognese sculptor himself had refined by making it a systematic practice. Bolognese waxes were famous throughout Europe for their verisimilitude and realistic attention to histological and anatomical details. Compared to the more idealised Florentine waxes, they even involved the use of bones and other human components, requiring the performing artists to have not only great manual and technical skills, but also up-to-date medical and scientific knowledge.
During this period of co-operation, Manzolini delved deeper into the anatomical functioning and pathologies of individual organs (as evidenced by his writings preserved in the archives of the Accademia delle Scienze), thus differentiating himself from his colleague, who still focused on osteology and myology, but who nevertheless continued to enjoy greater appreciation and support. A quarrel inevitably arose between the two, which led to the assistant's dismissal in 1745.
This was probably a stroke of luck for Anna Morandi. She was promptly called to help her husband, who had set up his own profession at home.
It is difficult to tell the works of husband and wife apart. Anna, too, was certainly already well versed in anatomical analysis and now, working alongside Giovanni, she was able to make a name for herself as a true wax modeller in her own right. Together, around 1750, they produced the panels commissioned by Professor Giovanni Antonio Galli for the new Laboratorio di Ostetricia set up in the city's Institute.
When her husband died in 1755, Morandi was nominated honorary academician at the Accademia Clementina, and the following year she was appointed modeller at the University’s Anatomy Department by the Bolognese Senate with the possibility, granted only to the most prestigious professors, of teaching from her home.
Despite the 300 Bolognese lire per year that she was offered for this position, Morandi's finances were not sufficient to support herself (in vain she asked the University’s Assunteria, the body in charge of salaries, for an increase), so much so that she was forced to entrust her eldest son, Giuseppe, to a charitable institution (the Oratorio di S. Bartolomeo di Reno).
However, fortune soon smiled on the wax modeller. Her son Giuseppe was adopted by Count Flaminio Solimei who, before his death in 1758, had arranged for an orphan to be drawn by lots to continue his lineage, as he had no heir. Anna herself was later welcomed into the sumptuous home of Senator Girolamo Ranuzzi, her great admirer.
In her new apartments, she hosted colleagues and admirers from all over the world, including Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg (1769).
She, like her contemporary and colleague Laura Bassi, had become a true Bolognese institution, and she received continuous offers and invitations from the European courts, as well as from circles and academies. Even London's prestigious Royal Society and the Tsarina Catherine II tried to summon her.
His sculptural skills were constantly enriched by in-depth studies of the human body, so that she was able to meet the ever-increasing demands of her customers: doctors, anatomists, surgeons, who now also required the reproduction of small organic parts and sections affected by particular pathologies.
While the complex technique she used is still a mystery, her scientific and theoretical sources are clear. Manuscript 2193, in which Morandi herself noted down her personal analytical observations and made reference to numerous treatises, including those of Antonio Maria Valsalva, Giovan Battista Morgagni and Giulio Casseri, is preserved at the Bologna University Library.
Her volumes and her preparations and tools of the trade were bought by her friend Ranuzzi who, in 1776, two years after Morandi died, gave them to the Istituto delle Scienze.
Later, the works collected by her son Giuseppe were taken up by Palazzo Poggi, and when the Bolognese Institute was dissolved and the University moved into the building (1803), the collections became teaching material for anatomy lessons held in the former church of Sant'Ignazio, not far away. They were then located in the new Istituto di Anatomia in Via Irnerio (1907) and remained there until 2000, when the University Museum opened in Palazzo Poggi.
The 56 works by Anna Morandi and her husband Giovanni Manzolini, who still stand next to each other in the form of wax busts, thus returned to their original rooms.
These splendid portraits were executed by Anna herself. Adorned in ornate and precious robes, their gazes turn to their thoughts, while their hands busy themselves: hers on a brain, his on an open heart.