La Specola: Cabinets of Curiosity - Johee Kwak

January 15, 2016

Origins of Art and Science

Professor Lia Halloran

Johee Kwak 

La Specola - Cabinets of Curiosity 

La Specola, being the oldest natural history museum included taxidermies and skeletons of numerous specimens. They displayed almost every single animal and also consisted of another floor dedicated to flowers and plants made out of wax. In Venice, we went to the natural history museum, which also included taxidermies and skeletons. However,  I had a completely different experience compared to La Specola.

            When I entered La Specola, the room was cold, quiet, and every single animal seemed to be staring at me. It had an eerie and ominous atmosphere but at the same time, a thrilling and inviting feeling that made me want to continue exploring the museum. Based on the collection, the specimens displayed in La Specola seemed to have been used for scientific purposes. Before the 18^th century, hunting was solely a competition between nobles to see what animals they were able to bring back. As a result, these animals were arrayed in homes as trophies or as a way of displaying their victory. After the 18^th century, mummifying animals were completely new and for the first time, it wasn’t used for aesthetic purposes but for scientific research and understanding the anatomical structure of an individual specimen.
            The natural history museum on the other hand was a completely new experience compared to La Specola. The collections were displayed in an aesthetic style, color coded, and had music playing in every room. This museum concentrated on the presentation of the atmosphere in relation to what was being displayed. For example, the aquatic room was painted in blue and had plastic spheres hanging from the ceiling, which had skeletons of whales, sharks, and other aquatic creatures. Compared to La Specola, this museum was a lot more playful and the way they displayed their collection was very artistic. There was even a part of a whale’s tooth that mimicked the pillars of the building and a giant crab hung in the ceiling which mimicked a chandelier. They deviated from the realistic and scientific aspects of the specimen and even had attached heads of a deer that were surrounded by butterflies.

            Going back to La Specola, one of the most fascinating collections I saw were the human waxes. They were individually casted and were very delicate and fragile to look at. The nerves in the human body were made by silk thread dipped in wax and were finely placed in the correct positions of the body. These waxes enabled scientists and doctors to understand proportions, mystic geometry, and the way the human body functioned as a whole. Walking through the collection, the female wax figures in the cases were positioned very elegantly with their face tilted, legs bent, and arms positioned towards their face. The female wax figures had identical faces because they wanted to emanate an idealistic beauty of a female figure. Her face and stance reminded me of figures painted in the renaissance or in Greek sculptures.  I was reminded of the close relationship art and science has.  Making figures in sculptures took scientific knowledge and measurements. Same goes for these wax figures, they needed to understand the correct proportions and most importantly, the figures needed to balance. Details such as accessorizing the figure in pearl necklaces somewhat gave life to them. The pearls were also made out of wax, which was an interesting fact because of the realistic nature of the pearls. When these waxes were demystified to the public, people were disturbed by how gruesome they were. However, the addition of pearls and the elegant stance alleviated the grotesqueness and gave the figure a softer look.  Male waxes on the other hand all had different faces and were not given the same attention as the female figures were. Male figures were equally admired as the female but only in their youth.  Every sculpture we saw on this trip consisted of male figures and sculptures being portrayed as a young and muscular entity. Michelangelo’s David is an example of many and so as men got older, they were not given the same attention therefore the waxes in the La Specolo used real face molds of different men.

            La Specola also had an entire collection dedicated to crystals, which was breathtaking to look at. As I looked at the crystals, I kept relating certain crystals to the animals I previously saw in the taxidermy collection upstairs. For example, there were amethyst crystals in a shape of a bird’s wing or brown colored crystals resembling a lion’s mane. I am greatly fascinated by how crystals naturally come to resemble shapes or colors of animals or objects that have no relation to each other.  Upstairs of La Specola had taxidermies of birds, specifically a lime green bird that caught my eye and the color of the feathers matched exactly with one of the crystals that were displayed in the cabinets. Moreover, not only did it share the exact same color, it also had very similar textures so I didn’t have to edit them; they simply blended with each other naturally. As a result, my cabinets of curiosity assignment explored the idea of how two completely different entities can mimic one another based on having similar attributes. There were crystal rocks that imitated the shape of an angel's wing. Maybe I was the only one who saw the resemblence but once I used Photoshop to merge the two photos, I was impressed by how they seemed to all fit together.  There were two twin crystals that were placed next to each other and I combined the crystals to the twin baby wax figures inside of the womb from the wax collection. During the critique, someone pointed out that the rocks merged onto the baby looked like angel wings, which was not something I intended. However, the fact that it can bee seen in that way was fascinating to me. Another piece I created was used from the human wax collection where I saw a baby wax figure elegantly holding on to his umbilical cord. I replaced the cord with an aquamarine crystal which made the baby look like he was cradling them in his arms. Furthermore, I employed the angel wing shaped crystals to the annunciation painting by Leonardo Da Vinci and another with one of Lippi’s painting we saw at the Uffizi museum. I displayed them on a cart so that people could walk around it by looking at the image as a whole but also deconstructing them individually and seeing how the crystals are merged into the drawings.  
     Observing the crystals from the exhibition was beautiful and overwhelming to look at, however what made it even more beautiful and fascinating to me was the idea of combining the crystals to a painting or another object or entity. It simply gave me an important reminder of art's ability to imitate nature's reproductive activities.