Seeing anatomy in literature and the arts: words, images and spaces since the Early Modern Age 

The International Conference - Seeing anatomy in literature and the arts: words, images and spaces since the Early Modern Age, curated by Linda Bisello (ISI, USI) and Carla Mazzarelli (ISA, USI), will be held on 15 and 16 May. This multi-site event between Mendrisio (Academy of Architecture, TAM) and Lugano (USI, West Campus) is the fruit of the collaboration between the Institute of Italian Studies and the Institute for the History and Theory of Art and Architecture. It is part of the Project The Civilisation of Anatomy". The genre of literary anatomies in 17th-century Italy (FNS 100012_204399). 

Historians of medicine, literature and the arts from Switzerland, Europe and the United States will interrogate from multidisciplinary perspectives the fortunes of anatomy and the long-lasting impact of the anatomical method of knowledge in the arts, in the culture of architectural design as well as in literary criticism, up to the performing arts in the contemporary age. 

The works will open at Teatro dell'architettura, designed by Mario Botta: a space evoking the Anatomical Theatre where dissections took place in the early modern age and where the body is both demonstrated and exhibited. The work will continue in Lugano, where the different conceptions of the anatomical model as a tool of knowledge and the motif of scrutinising the body as a vision of one's inner reality will be addressed. If "doing anatomy" has historically meant disarticulating, classifying, performing, and investigating the truth and beauty of the " body factory" for a plurality of sciences and arts, the conference proposes to compare these numerous and different expressions with which human beings always have, as in a mirror, "[...] looked inside the body wide open at themselves" (G. Manganelli).