@article{ntn 1525, author = {Corinna Wagner}, title = {Replicating Venus: Art, Anatomy, Wax Models, and Automata}, volume = {0}, year = {2017}, url = {http://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1525/}, issue = {24}, doi = {10.16995/ntn.783}, abstract = {<p class="p1">This article examines a number of concurrences and conflicts between anatomy and art, from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. It focuses on a critical juncture in the ‘culture of dissection’ in the 1850s, when some writers and artists turned against what has been called an ‘aesthetics of anatomical realism’ or an ‘aesthetics of transparency’ in literature, painting, and sculpture. In particular, there were growing anxieties about the representation of the interior of the female body. This article shows how the figure of Venus was repeatedly evoked by a number of writers and artists to express feelings of disgust towards an abject female interior, as well as to promote, or to protest against, modern forms of anatomical representation. This exploration begins with the late eighteenth-century wax Anatomical Venus and ends with the android Venus who was all exterior — a body without organs — of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s 1886 novel <em>Tomorrow’s Eve</em>.</p>}, month = {5}, issn = {1755-1560}, publisher={Open Library of Humanities}, journal = {19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century} }