By Jacopo Villani
My name is Jacopo Villani, and I am a rising junior at Johns Hopkins University, where I
am pursuing a double major in the History of Art and Molecular and Cellular Biology. I was born in Pisa, Italy, and moved to Maryland when I was three years old. Growing up, I loved making and looking at art, and my dad, a history professor, would take my brother and me to museums in Washington, DC almost every week. I was especially drawn to Italian and Renaissance art, which brought together my love for both Italy and history. When I began my studies at Johns Hopkins, majoring in the History of Art felt like a natural choice.
At the same time, I have long been interested in medicine and the life sciences. Since I
was sixteen, I have volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad. These experiences have deepened my desire to pursue a career in medicine, which is why I am also majoring in Molecular Biology.
Although these two fields may seem unrelated, I’ve found that they intersect in
unexpected and exciting ways, particularly in the study of anatomical representation. I love
exploring the connections between art and the humanities, and science and medicine. This
interest was sparked by a course I took with Professor Stephen Campbell at Johns Hopkins titled Leonardo da Vinci: Lives and Afterlives of a Premodern Artist. In this course, we studied Leonardo da Vinci’s artistic and scientific achievements, and for my final project, I examined how Leonardo might have structured his planned treatise on anatomy, and I compared his findings, philosophies, and techniques to those of Andreas Vesalius. The project involved extensive research in both primary and secondary literature, and while I was pleased with the final result, it left me eager to explore further the intersections between anatomy and art.
For this reason, the Tyler Fellowship represented the perfect opportunity to continue
exploring this field of study, and I was eager to examine the next chapter in the history of
anatomical visualization: the development of ceroplastics, or anatomical wax modeling.
My research investigates the history of ceroplastics in Italy from the mid-17th to early
19th century. I am particularly interested in how anatomical wax modeling evolved from
dramatic, emotionally charged displays in the Baroque period to more neutral, didactic tools in the Enlightenment. The main questions I want to answer are: How did these models navigate the boundary between science and art? How did their aesthetic style evolve over time, and how were they used in different institutional settings? I am especially drawn to the work of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo in Florence, whose grotesque and pathos-laden wax tableaux reflected the theatricality of the Baroque; the Bolognese artist and anatomist Anna Morandi Manzolini, who modeled body parts with meticulous precision and a strong sense of intellectual agency; and the collaboration between Felice Fontana and Clemente Susini, whose wax models became standardized teaching tools across Europe.
This summer, I plan to travel to Italy to visit major collections of ceroplastics and archival
materials. My itinerary includes Florence, where I will study the collections of La Specola and the works of Zumbo and Susini, and Bologna, where I will examine models created by Anna Morandi. In preparation for this work, I have already begun reading key secondary literature and reviewing recent exhibition catalogues. I plan to document my observations through field notes, photographs, and close visual analysis, while also engaging with museum curators and local scholars to understand how these models are interpreted today.
As I embark on this journey, I am excited to deepen my understanding of how anatomical
knowledge was visualized and disseminated in early modern Europe. I look forward to engaging firsthand with the materiality of wax sculpture and understanding not only the historical importance of these ceroplastics, but also how they were presented, made, and preserved. I anticipate many challenges—such as navigating unfamiliar archives, managing a tight travel schedule, and working with 17th-century Italian—but I have already been in contact with several scholars in Italy, and I feel confident that I will be able to produce a successful project.
HSF House Blogs 