| Photography between Art and Science a balance maintained in a masterly fashion documentation by the Alinari brothers |
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by Anna Maria Fiorentino
A fine exhibition that illustrated the relationship between photography and anatomy, with especial attention paid to the Florentine School whose most famous anatomists were Giulio Chiarugi, Filipo Pacini and Alessandro Tafani. There is various material on display at the exhibition which is split up into three sections.
Not only can we behold the pictures of the anatomical department, the laboratories with their instruments but also the history of anatomical illustration. Here we have the photographic reproductions from the archives of the Alinari brothers, the anatomical studies of Leonardo and Pisanello and the water colours from the Library of the Department of Human Anatomy and Histology and the Medica Centrale of Careggi.
| The catalogue of the exhibition published by Alinari |
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The public are presented with the twofold aspect of the knowledge and representation of the human body: the scientific and the artistic. One comes face to face with the interest for knowledge of the entire apparatus of the human body that necessitates the dissecting of corpses, and the interest of the great artists, from Leonardo to Durer, in getting to the bottom of the mechanisms of the human body so as to better represent its grace and power.
The balance between Art and Science is maintained in a masterly fashion by the precious documentation of the Alinari brothers' Photography Museum. Why though, apart from the technique, do we so powerfully succumb to the fascination of these photos? Perhaps because they look like on-set photographs, representations of theatre with involuntary flashes of irony.
| "Anatomical dissection" |  |
If the medical student looks through the lens, diverting his gaze from the skeleton placed in front of him, as though wanting to hypothesize his future as a doctor, averting the danger of death from his patients, in front of us he find Mr Sgatti, grave digger of the Regio Arcispedale of Santa Maria Novella, who seems to be making conversation with the skeletons that surround him while looking them firmly in the eye.
The subject of this portrait is reproduced on the cover of the current catalogue sponsored, like the exhibition, by the Alinari brothers, the University of Florence, the Cassa di Risparmio of Florence and the Assicurazioni Generali.
"Medicine and anatomy in the collection of the University of Florence
and in the photographs from the Alinari brothers' archives".
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