Di cera e d'inchiostro. Spunti letterari tra arte e anatomia nel XVIII secolo

The contribution focuses on the relationship between literature and thanatology in the context of Baroque literature by dwelling on the figures of Francesco Redi and the Sicilian ceroplast Giulio Gaetano Zumbo. The two, one a celebrated archiater and the other an artist, attended the Medici court, in Florence. Both in the studies of the one and also in the depictions of the other, the decaying flesh becomes a portrait of the feeling of an era. It happens in the verse and prose of many coeval authors, from Marino to Dotti, as well as in Liguozzi’s paintings. However, the relationship between the body made the object of anatomy or at any rate disemboweled is not analogous to that enacted by the Scapigliatura, who devoted numerous pages to similar themes, since the secular and positivist nineteenth century looks at matter, while the Baroque, as well as all its protagonists, are, if anything, interested in the erosive action of time, rather than in its bequests.