Dried Cadavers on Display in a "Terrible Example of Tyranny," Ferdinand I, Fifteenth Century Naples

In an interesting 15th century precursor to spectacular displays of human bodies such as Gunther von Hagen's Body Worlds:

Ferdinand I [of Naples (1423 – 1494)], Alfonso II's long-reigning father, had filled an exhibition hall of Castel Nuovo with the mummified remains of his enemies. Paolo Giovio, the sixteenth-century bishop, doctor, and biographer, writes in Historiarum sue temporis: "They say that these dried cadavers were displayed, pickled with herbs, a frightful sight, in the dress they wore when alive and with the same ornaments, so that by this terrible example of tyranny, those who did not wish to be similarly served might be properly afraid."

Just one of the fascinating revelations in the wonderful book Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, by Benjamin Taylor. Another writer--Jacob Burckhardt, in his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy of 1878 --described it thusly:

Besides hunting, which he practiced regardless of all rights of property, his pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents near him, either alive in well-guarded prisons, or dead and embalmed, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime. Fearing no one, he would take great pleasure in conducting his guests on a tour of his prized “museum of mummies.”

And wow; looks like this made an appearance on The Borgias as well; I guess I had better consider giving that show another chance.

Image source: Wikipedia

19th Century Medical Mummies in the News

A group of forensic anthropologists have completed a meticulous analysis of a set of real human anatomy displays from 19C Italy. Using CT scans and other chemical analysis, the group determined that, some 200 years ago, anatomist Giovan Battista Rini "petrified" the corpses with a mercury and other heavy metals. He injected some tinctures and used others as baths. The eyes are fake. Basically, Rini was modern medicine's first "Body Worlds" guy.--The Terrifying Body Worlds Mummy Heads of 19C Italy, Gakwer

Ok. So although this Gawker story has a MAJOR inaccuracy--Giovan Battista Rini was hardly "medicine's first 'Body Worlds' guy;" that honor would surely go to Honoré Fragonard and his incredible Anatomical Ecorchés from the 18th century--its still nice to see anatomical preparations discussed and pictured in the mainstream media. Read more about the recent CT scan analysis on preparations from the 19th century collection of anatomist Giovan Battista Rini pictured above here and here. Images by Dario Piombino-Mascali, EURAC, and Clinical Anatomy/Wiley via National Geographic article; click here to see more.

Thanks to my buddy Ken for sending this my way.

Morbid Anatomy Mummification Class on Time Magazine's Website!

More video documentation of our extremely popular mummification class at Observatory, this time from Time Magazine's website. And, of course, just in time for Halloween!

Please note: our next mummification class taking place this Sunday, November 6th, has a few open slots. You can find out details by clicking here; you can RSVP for the class by emailing me at morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com. You can find out more about Observatory and the classes and lectures we offer by clicking here.

Comparative Death Rituals; Halloween and Day of the Dead Costume Party; A "Dead Animal Man: This week at Observatory!

This week and beyond at Observatory; hope very much to see you there!

"A Dead Animal Man": Screening and Q & A with Film Maker Lily Henderson
Date: Monday, October 17th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

"A Dead Animal Man" is a new documentary film which profiles Nate Hill, public attention seeker and self-proclaimed rogue taxidermist, as he sets out to make A.D.A.M--A Dead Animal Man--from various animal parts gathered from NYC's Chinatown dumpsters. This film details Hill's quest from conception to completion, and contains vignettes ranging from the humourous to the bizarre to the extremely grotesque. At the end, Hill's desire for stardom is realized, but for what? The film saves us from extreme nausea but still pushes us far enough to the point where we ask ourselves--how far is too far?

Tonight, join us for a 25 minute sneak peak version of the film. Filmmakers will be in attendance to answer questions. Barf bags not included.

Lily Henderson is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn. She is an active member of the the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and recently released Lessons for the Living - a film about why certain people choose to spend their free time with dying strangers. More information can be found here. Henderson and her co-producer, Lila Dobbs, found Nate Hill's story intriguing but not because of the spectacle he was creating. Their goal was to find the deeper meaning in his public persona and the decaying Frankenstein body next to him.

From the Magnificent to the Macabre: Send-Offs for the Dead
Illustrated talk and book signing with Sarah Murray, author of Making an Exit
Date: Thursday, October 20th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5 Presented by Morbid Anatomy
*** Thematic DJed after-party will follow the lecture; Books will be also available for sale and signing

Sending off the dead is something mankind does spectacularly well. There’s perhaps no human condition to which more attention has been devoted—faced with death, we create elaborate ceremonies and build great architectural edifices. We bury our loved ones in the ground or burn them in fire. We leave corpses as carrion for the birds, hang them in trees, or stow them in caves. We arrange for riderless horses to accompany the cortege to the cemetery or toss the remains of our fellows into sacred rivers amid the sound of bells and the swirl of incense.

In researching her latest book, Making an Exit (St Martin’s Press), Sarah Murray traveled the world in search of the best send offs. She will describe her encounters with everything from a spectacular Balinese royal cremation and a chandelier in the Czech Republic made entirely from human bones to the American death care industry’s biggest road show and a ghoulish Sicilian crypt where mummified corpses line the walls. Join Sarah for an engaging and highly personal discussion in which she will also present some of the unusual objects and artifacts she collected on her travels (she might even tell you about the plans for her own eventual send off).

Sarah Murray’s new book is Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre—How We Dignify the Dead (St Martin’s Press, October 2011). She is also author of Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat (St Martin’s Press 2007, Picador 2008). A longtime Financial Times contributor and freelance writer, she lives in New York City.

Image: Capuchin Catacombs in Sicily, photo by the author

Halloween and Day of the Dead Party with New Episodes of Ghoul A Go-Go and The Midnight Archive, Costume Contest, Music, and More!
Date: Saturday, October 22
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $12
Presented by Morbid Anatomy and Borderline Projects

Please join us on Saturday, October 22 for a Halloween/Day of the Dead costume party featuring brand new episodes of Ghoul A Go-Go and The Midnight Archive, as well as burlesque, music, piñata, food, beverages, sugar skulls, a costume contest, and more! Please, please (!!!) come in costume! All costumes welcomed!

The night's amusements will include:

ENTERTAINMENT!

• Ghoul a Go Go: Premiere of a brand new episode
• The Midnight Archive: Two new episodes of The Midnight Archive, Ronni Thomas' new web series based on Observatory
• Music: Wavy gravy Halloween music for the all night dance party
• Burlesque: A creepy Burlesque performance by Lil' Miss Lixx
  

FOOD AND DRINK!

• Traditional Food and Drink Specials throughout the evening
  

COSTUME CONTEST!

• Prizes for costumes inspired by either Vlad, Creighton, The Invisible Man, or any of the clips featured on Ghoul a Go Go

TRADITIONAL DAY OF THE DEAD ATTRACTIONS!

• Day of the Dead Altar: Altar de Muertos, an installation by Rebeca and Salvador Olguin celebrating Mexico and its past, history and culture
• Face painting: Have the Kiss of Death painted on your face by La Catrina
• Pan de Muerto: Indulge in this traditional dessert called Bread of Death
• Piñata: Dash death to smithereens with our annual death piñata!
• Sugar skulls: Decorate and eat or bring home your own Day of the Dead sugar skull
• Offerings to the Departed: In some places in Mexico, people leave small, coffin-like figures out for the souls of the departed. Guests are invited to leave their own offering; they will be available at the installation

Image: El Jarabe en Ultratumba (The Folk Dance Beyond the Grave), Jose Guadalupe Posada

October 24: Freaks and Pornography: Victorian Popular Anatomy Museums, Sex and the Unusual Body: Illustrated talk with author Sarah Kathryn York

November 6: Class: Mummification: Learn the art and ritual of animal mummification with instructor Sorceress Cagliastro *** Limited Class Size; Please RSVP to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com

To be alerted to future events, "like" Morbid Anatomy on Facebook by clicking here or sign up for the Observatory mailer by clicking here. More on all events here. You can find out more about these events by clicking here.

Mexican Mummies Embarking on U.S. Tour!

The famous mummies of Museo de las Momias in Guanajuato, Mexico (see above) are embarking upon a U.S. tour! Their first stop--just announced today--will be the Detroit Science Center in Detroit, Michigan; it is unclear what other cities will be included in the tour, though it has been remarked that there will be 6 other U.S .destinations. Let's hope New York City (or somewhere in the outlying area) makes the cut!

Here is the full story, found in today's Detroit News:

Mexican mummies visit Detroit in October
Kim Kozlowski / The Detroit News

Detroit -- A rare glimpse into the mystery of death will be on display at the Detroit Science Center in October with the first U.S. exhibit of 36 mummies from a World Heritage site in Mexico, museum officials plan to announce today.
The 100-year-old mummies will be on loan from the Museo de las Momias in Guanajuato, Mexico.

"This is the largest and most significant collection of mummies in the Western hemisphere," said Kelly Fulford, spokeswoman for the Detroit Science Center. "It's a phenomenal opportunity to view something really rare and unique ... something you wouldn't be able to see unless you travelled to Mexico."

The Mexican museum opened in the late 1800s after mummified corpses of men, women and children were exhumed from the colonial city's cemetery because their families could no longer pay the crypt fee. Some of the corpses were discovered to have "accidentally" or naturally mummified, meaning nature, not man, stopped their decomposition.

Today 111 natural mummies have attracted visitors to the museum in the city, northwest of Mexico City, since the early 1900s.

Mummy scholars who have been conducting research in Detroit say the exhibit will offer a repository of anthropological, medical and cultural information.
"When you come to this exhibit, you will get to know these people," sad Ronald Beckett, a Phoenix-based Fulbright scholar who studies mummies around the world. "The exhibit will tell the individual human stories of these long-dead people, and give them their identity back."

Museum visitors, for instance, will learn about the health of the mummies in the forensic room of the five-room display. This will be done with the help of modern medical technologies such as computer tomography, endoscopy and DNA analysis.

"The study of old pathologies puts a light on health issues today," said Vivian Henoch, medical exhibit developer. "Anything we glean from the mummies informs what we do and how we advance our understanding of many health issues."

The traveling mummy exhibit will leave Detroit in 2010 and go on to six other U.S. destinations before retuning to Mexico in 2012.

You can see the original article by clicking here. For more about the mummies, you can visit the Museo de las Momias website by clicking here; you can also visit website that has been created for the traveling exhibition--entitled "Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato--by clicking here. Note: I highly recommend you take some time to peruse the photo galleries on these sites.

Image Source: The Detroit News

Rosalia Lombardo, or "Sleeping Beauty" of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy

Today, waiting to get my haircut, I picked up an issue of National Geographic featuring a story on the famous mummies of the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Italy. Now, I had long been familiar with the epic array of mummies in this catacombs, but somehow I had not been aware of one of the crypts more enchanting residents --Rosalia Lomnbardo, or the"Sleeping Beauty" of the catacombs.

As National Geographic tells it, Rosalia Lombardo was a two-year-old Sicilian girl who died of pneumonia in 1920. She's is considered one of the world's best-preserved bodies, and has resided in a glass fronted coffin in the crypt since her death. For many years, the formula that preserved her so magnificently was considered a mystery, but it has recently been discovered that her preparator--Sicilian taxidermist and embalmer Alfredo Salafia--injected her with a mixture of formalin, zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid, and glycerin. Apparently, its the zinc salts that kept her so well preserved, in effect petrifying her body.

You can read the entire National Geographic article on the Capuchin Crypts here (and look at all the wonderful photos--be sure to check out the photo gallery!); you can read more about the mystery of Rosalia Lombardo here.

Photograph by Vincent J. Musi, as seen in National Geographic.

The Living Dead: Inside the Palermo Crypt, Marco Lanca (2000)

Thanks so much to Herbert Pfostl (of the wonderful websites Blind Pony Books and Paper Graveyard) for alerting me to the presence of this amazing book from his collection, Living Dead: Inside the Palermo Crypt. Per my request, he kindly scanned in some images from the book and wrote a brief review for Morbid Anatomy:

A splendid photo book about the eight thousand 'paper' corpses - hanging, drained, straw filled and eyeless from 'walls darkened by death' in the niches and corridors beneath the Chiesa dei Cappuccini. Forty four saints, virgins and very old looking children, and soldiers and priests in lace and garments with stories from their 'dust filled hearts' - beautifully imagined by Laura Facchi.

Thanks Herbert!

Note: If anyone has books, images, films, websites, exhibitions, article, etc. they would like to review for Morbid Anatomy, or link suggestions of any sort, we would love to hear about it; Please email us here.

The Mummies of Vác (18th Century, Hungary)

From the excellent guidebook Weird Europe:

In 1994, workmen renovating a church stumbled upon a 18th-century burial crypt containing over 160 bodies, all naturally mummified in their pretty coffins...The mummies...are dressed as they were at their funerals 200 years ago in woolen socks, bonnets, and ruffled white gowns with flowing ribbons. Their eyes are sunken but otherwise they appear peaceful and newly dead, like a more relaxed version of Pompeii.

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see and photograph (see above) these mummies when they were being exhibited at the Budapest Museum of Natural History.