The re-birth of Venus in Florence's royal museum of physics and natural history

For a number of years after the inauguration of Peter Leopold's Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History in Florence in 1775, the most powerful magnet at the heart of the collection became the newly exhibited Anatomical Venus, capable of disassembly and recomposition. This article examines the explicit scientific and artistic significance of the Venus within the context of the Royal Museum and, more broadly, how this idealized three-dimensional image of the anatomized female body served Peter Leopold's mission of popular Enlightenment. A novel instrument of science, an unexpected physics machine, the deconstructable Venus allowed the expert as well as the amateur and even the unschooled virtually to do human dissection themselves and thereby represented a potent challenge to the iconic Venuses of the past regime. My analysis centres on the overt connections and competition of the waxen Venus with classical and Renaissance icons of Medici dynastic reign, just across the Arno in the Uffizi.