A small study after a photograph of a flayed human head made of wax from the Specola Museum in Florence. The image appears to be an horizontal rotation of an illustrative photograph by Liberto Perugi. Wax anatomicals were of especial interest to the artist while working in the Laboratory of Human Anatomy, Oxford. And the artist identified a wax model [...]
A small study after a photograph of a flayed human head made of wax from the Specola Museum in Florence. The image appears to be an horizontal rotation of an illustrative photograph by Liberto Perugi. Wax anatomicals were of especial interest to the artist while working in the Laboratory of Human Anatomy, Oxford. And the artist identified a wax model of the human brain in the collection of the laboratory (formerly belonging to Christ Church College) as being a "specola" model. At about the same time, Tilley carried out an experiment to dissect and plastinate human brain stem. A description of the plastination technique makes an appearance in Tilley's short story, The new Laocoön, published 2023. The work's tentative date of 1997, would place it after the artist's return to Japan from Oxford. (Perugi's photograph appears in a book published in 1977: Benedetto Lanza et al., Le Cere Anatomische della Specola di Firenze, Firenze, Arnaud Editore).