Anna Morandi Manzolini

Anna Morandi Manzolini (; 21 January 1714 – 9 July 1774) was an Italian anatomist, anatomical wax modeler, and lecturer of anatomical design at the University of Bologna. She became internationally known for the production of anatomical wax models based on anatomical dissections.

Life Morandi was born on 21 January 1714 in Bologna, Italy. She was raised in a traditional home where marriage, children, and a domestic lifestyle were natural choices for women. Women were expected to be wives, raise their children and essentially tend to their husbands needs and wants. This wasn’t the case for Anna Morandi. She became a wife and had children, but instead of tending to her husband, she worked side by side with him. In 1736, Morandi married her childhood sweetheart, Giovanni Manzolini, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna. She was 20, and he was 24 years old. After five years of marriage, she had become the mother of six children. The studio was not only for art but became an anatomy “school” and laboratory for them both. The couple worked together dissecting bodies and learning from them. Between Giovanni’s expertise in human anatomy and Anna’s artistic abilities, they were able to recreate such incredible pieces by remodeling human anatomy through sculpture. They taught an abundance of medical students because they had access to many body parts and cadavers. Giovanni and Anna quickly became well known around, not only in Bologna but Italy as a whole being that by the early 1750s, the couple had been recognized locally and internationally.

Anna Morandi Manzolini impacted the 18th-century Bolognese culture through an artistic and scientific approach. She brought human anatomy to life and allowed many spectators to learn and enjoy her anatomical pieces. Tourists, especially medical practitioners, from all over the world came to see her work.

Morandi died in the city on 9 July 1774,

Works Morandi partnered with her husband, and then surpassed him in skill and reputation after his death in 1755 in the scientific knowledge of human anatomy as well as the accurate demonstration of anatomy in wax sculpture. During her famed household lectures on anatomy given before medical practitioners and grand tourists alike, she imparted expert knowledge of empirical anatomy derived from the dissection of more than 1,000 cadavers by her own account, as well as of anatomical discoveries made both by the couple and Morandi alone. She clearly demonstrated, both theoretically and practically, the structure of the human body.

Morandi also crafted two portrait busts in wax, both of which are currently on display at the Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. One is a self-portrait, in which she depicts herself at work dissecting a human brain; the other is of her husband, engaged in similar activity. Morandi's wax models were highly prized both while she was alive and long after her death. Some of her anatomical models were so skilfully moulded that they were extremely difficult to distinguish from the actual body parts from which they were copied. Furthermore, her acute skill at dissection resulted in her discovery of several previously unknown anatomical parts, including the termination of the oblique muscle of the eye. She held the distinction of having been the first person to reproduce body parts of minute portions in wax, including capillary vessels and nerves. Her wax self-portrait showing her dissecting a human brain was placed from 1776 in the anatomy museum of the Institute of Sciences in Palazzo Poggi alongside her wax bust of her husband. They were returned to the Poggi in 2000.

Honors The title of Professor of Anatomy by the Institute of Bologna, 1756 Catherine II of Russia invited her to Moscow to lecture and made her a member of the Russian Royal Scientific Association The British Royal Society elected her a member and invited her to lecture in London Honoured in Italy as the inventor and perfecter of anatomical preparations in wax