Galileo's Finger and the Perspiring Waxwork: On death, appearance and the promise of flesh

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Notes

¹Freud's account of the uncanny in fact mentions specifically the slippage in appearance of life and death, suggesting that ‘doubt as to whether an apparently animate object is really alive, and, conversely, whether a lifeless object might not perhaps be animate, is distinctly uncanny’ (Freud 2003 [1919]: 135).

²An exhibition at the Wellcome Institute in London in the autumn of 2009, Exquisite Bodies, presented a number of such models. Interestingly, the earlier exhibits from the 1760s appear to have an idealized death-likeness (the figure is recumbent, unflawed with open eyes), but the later nineteenthcentury ones appear to be literally modelled on the dead, with particular personalized features, skin disorders and bearing the incisions of the anatomical process. Notably, this exhibition (like BodyWorlds) also framed its exhibits as in a theatre, making extensive use of red velvet curtains and gold brocade.