their beauty and accuracy. The six hundred-odd pieces were made in the laboratories that had been installed at La Specola by Fontana in 1771. Initially, the Grand Duke was not entirely in favour of dissecting cadavers, necessary to create the waxes, but soon the quality of the results convinced him of their value, and he personally supervised the preparation of the paints used by the workshops. The anatomical section of La Specola has recently been reopened after restoration of the interiors, financed by the bank Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze. Strangely, one does not experience the uneasy feeling often evoked by images in wax, as described by D'Annunzio ("I am terrified by the immobile expression of the wax statues in horrendous museums"), probably due to the fact that the waxy surfaces bear a distinct resemblance to cadavers.
The works at La Specola are extraordinarily realistic but also possess a remarkable aesthetic quality that renders them true artistic masterpieces.
Most were created by Clement Susini, the most brilliant sculptor in wax of the day, who brought the wax sculpture workshop of La Specola to a position of renown in the whole of Europe. Waxes were not new to Florence: up until the mid 15th-century, a number of wax statues were housed in the church of SS. Annunziata.