Gaetano Giulio Zumbo

Gaetano Giulio Zumbo , Italian wax modeller. It was born, in 1656, with Syracuse, of a noble, but not very favoured family of fortune.

Endowed with an astonishing genius for arts, it cultivated them as of its childhood and learned, without the help of any Master, principles of the sculpture. The sight of the monuments of the Italy completed to develop its provisions and it improved them by the study of the anatomy, of which it followed courses to Rome and Bologna. Not having learned how to handle the chisel, it employed for its compositions a coloured wax which it prepared itself, and of which it had only the secrecy.

Its first works promptly made it know, and it was destined for Florence by the large-duke of Tuscany, which assigned a considerable treatment to him. Among the works which it carried out for this prince, most famous is that which the Italians name Corrusione (Putrefaction). It is composed of five coloured wax figures, which represent a dying man, a dead-man, a body who starts to corrupt himself, another with corrupted half, and finally a corpse full with rot and corroded of worms. This work was judged worthy to be placed in the gallery of Florence, so rich in masterpieces of all the kinds; one transported it since to the cabinet of natural history. In spite of the benevolence with which the large-duke honoured it, Zumbro could not make him the sacrifice of its freedom. This prince says to him by receiving his good-byes: “You will be able to find a guard more powerful than me, but you will not find of them one which can better appreciate you. ” Nothing could retain it. It went to Gènes; and, in the space from four to five years, it made there two great compositions looked like masterpieces: the Nativity of Jesus-Christ and the Deposition .

Being associated Desnoues, French surgeon, it carried out various anatomic specimens, inter alia the body of a woman died in layers with her child, of a truth if striking that the spectators believed to even see nature. Discussions of interest scrambled the two associated ones, and Zumbo came in France, bringing its principal works. After being itself stopped some time with Marseilles, it went to Paris, where its reputation had preceded it. In 1701, it presented to the Academy of Science a head out of wax, prepared for an anatomical demonstration. One distinguished there the least details, the veins, the arteries, the nerves, the glands, the muscles with their color natural ( Hist. of the Academy , 1701, p. 57). It was bought by Louis XIV, which made some present at Maréchal, its first surgeon.

Zumbo died in October of the same year, carrying the admirable secrecy of which it was used for to color wax; but it was found since. Its two beautiful compositions representing the Nativity and the Deposition were acquired, after its death, by Hay. They were seen, in 1755, in the cabinet of Boivin, and Caylus speaks about it with the greatest praises ( Mémoires of the Académie of the inscriptions , T. 28, p. 55). The Description that had made of it Piles, inserted in the Journal of the scientists , year 1707, Supplém., p. 450, was reprinted in its Cours of painting by principles .

After its rupture with Zumbo, Desnoues had come to Bologna, where it had obtained a pulpit of anatomy and surgery. Informed of the reception which the sicilian artist had just received in Paris, he wrote a Lettre in which he asserted glory to have discovered the secrecy to prepare out of coloured wax the objects of anatomy, announcing that he was going to go to France to uncover impostor (see Mémoires of Trévoux , July 1707). But an anonymity justified Zumbo of the reproach of plagiarism and proved that it was Desnoues which had adapted the secrecy of the sicilian artist (see Mémoires of Trévoux , August, even year). Desnoues not having pushed back this charge, one must conclude from it that it found it too quite founded to hope to destroy it.

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