La Specola Blog

La Specola Blog

One piece of the amazing two hundred and forty one year old La Specola museum was a full of waxes of anatomical parts that were cast in plaster to create wax figures. Originally, these figures were made in wood, but the bodies did not last as long and were harder to inscribe specific details with veins and nerves that were then mastered in the wax models. The nerves were made with silk threads and real hair was also used for the models. Another part of the museum included a little theater that had small wax figurines in glass containers that depicted the plague and other themes of life. One model included the power of time, which is still a relevant theme that can be applied today. The little theater box depicted that time has control over power, literature, people, and history. A crown, book, strong person, and a scroll represented each of these respectively. Time was configured as a man with wings to signify that time is fleeting and opportunities are soon lost without convictional action.

Following the waxes exhibit there was a larger group of rooms dedicated to zoology and taxidermy. I incorporated the zoological portion into my project through the infamous Florentine cinghiale. One of the first days in Florence we went to rub the nose of the il porcellino, or the piglet, in the nearby Mercato Nuovo. The boar was sculpted by Pietro Tacca in about 1634 and originally destined for the Boboli Garden, but was moved to the mercato, as it remains a popular visiting spot for tourists. The legend states that upon rubbing the porcellino’s nose, a return trip to Florence is guaranteed. Additionally wild cinghiales or boars have been known to run the Florentine countryside by destroying gardens and dashing away from local hunters. Wild boards are becoming an even bigger issue for local wine growers in Tuscany as the number of cinghiales has supposed raised to one hundred and fifty thousand and the exact explanation for the explosion of the population is still unclear.

As farmers and hunters alike search out cinghiales, I too have searched through the Specola and throughout Florence and Rome for inspiration relating to the cinghiales. Ever since I was a child I liked pigs and Disney. For my cabinet of curiosity, I developed a tree of life mixed with various species of animals, crystals from African countries, and anatomical drawings which humans and animals share. As a developed my project further, I tried to pull cubism themes into the work and leave more of the project up for interpretation rather than a cartoon face value project. Just as the Tuscan farmers could not explain the population explosion of the cinghiales in the countryside, incorporation cubism and more abstract art on a three-dimensional model, a wire tree sculpture was my best representation of allowing the viewer to create or fabricate their own answers. I was also highly impressed with what La Specola had to offer for scientific investigational purposes in zoology and natural history since 1775. It was intriguing for someone whom wants to go to medical school to learn the very roots of how anatomical learning and surgery first started in Florence for the beginning of medical schools to come in the future. La Specola and the cinghiale are two very keys important pieces of the Florentine culture that are represented in my interpretation of a cabinet of curiosity.