Lost Wax: Anatomical Votives and the Performance of Medici Devotion in Fifteenth-Century Florence
This master’s paper centers on the thriving culture of votive donation in Quattrocento Florence, specifically focusing on offerings in the form of anatomical wax sculptures (isolated legs, arms, breasts, heads, etc). These devotional sculptures were donated in gratitude for miraculous healing, and were considered an extension of the donor’s physical body. Because of this corporeal connection, the votives were often intimately connected to their donor. For example, ideally a votive leg would have been made to the same size and weight as the donor’s actual limb. The wax figures were often brightly painted, and even clothed in the wardrobe of the devotee, to further increase the verisimilitude of the offering. I interrogate the theological and psychological effects of prominently displaying these unsettlingly lifelike images in church spaces, and how these devotional sculptures were therefore visually and spatially connected to the bodily relics of saints. Furthermore, I analyze Lorenzo de’ Medici’s motivations for commissioning three life-sized wax portrait effigies from Andrea del Verrocchio and Orsino Benintendi after the Pazzi Conspiracy. Inherently humble in their material, and widely accessible by patrons of lower classes, the Medici family’s engagement with this form of popular piety exemplifies the family’s active self-fashioning of their public image as modest citizens of Florence.
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