Teatro Anatomico™

§ The name of the company

The name of the theatre company comes from Anatomical Theatre of University of Padua (Università di Padova).

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The Anatomical Theatre

The anatomical theatre was a temporary building made of wood emulating the amphitheatre’s model, this is the reason why it was named not only “theatre”, but also “anatomical amphitheatre”.

The anatomical theatre was used during the lessons of anatomy to make the students attend at the bodies’ dissections.

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The University of Padua

Around the XIII century one of the oldest university in the world grown up in Padua. Traditionally its foundation is up to the 1222.

In the University of Padua Andrea Vesalio graduated in 1537 and in 1594 an anatomical theatre has been built inside it, under the leading of Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente.

Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente

[Download this image as a png (.zip 6.4 Kb).]

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Andrea Vesalio

Vesalio had nothing to do directly with the Anatomical Theatre of Padua, because he died thirty years before its building up.

Beside this there is a strong connection between Vesalio and the Anatomical Theatre of Padua.

Vesalio was a flemish anatomist considered one of the fathers of the modern science.

The approach of Vesalio differed from his precursors because he was highlighting the importance of experience against tradition’s authority.

To discover the body’s morphology, Vesalio was not only entrusting what was once written on the canonical texts, but he was rather employing the direct learning, till clasping the dagger to perform corpses’ dissections in front of the students, radically giving up to any form of intermediation. As a general use, indeed, the material work was up to a technician called “settore” and to the “ostentore”.

Vesalio gave a real importance to the dissection practice, and maybe it has been not by chance that inside the university where he graduated is born the first stable anatomical teather.

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The Anatomical Theatre of Padua

The Anatomical Theatre of Padua has been built to stay still and the University of Padua has been the first university which integrated it in the body of its architecture to adopte it during the lessons.

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Theatre and live theatre

The theatre company Teatro Anatomico™ moves towards an intention similar to Vesalio.

The theatre company Teatro Anatomico™ works over and with the body throught an approach which shares the process linked to the birth, development and death of an artwork.

The medium is live performance, which still remains an important, direct and phisical experience source, the same direct experience that was so important for Vesalio to face the study of the human body.

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De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

Vesalio was really influenced by art and in particular by those artists who worked in Italy during the Renaissance. The impact his work has done for the birth of modern medical science is due also to the strength he put in using the illustrations as a research and not only representation tool.

For Vesalio was obvious that any image has an expression ability wider than any written text.

Vesalio shows this in his work: “De humani corporis fabrica libri septem” printed for the first time in 1543 in Basel, with the drawing inside perhaps made by a student from Tiziano, Johann Stephan van Kalkar.

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The theatre company of Padua

Few years after that, Padua gave birth a very peculiar theatre company: the first theatre company which adopted a sort of legal form and set up itself istitutionally.

The creators, as mentioned by Antonio Pavan in an article came up on the forum degli attori italiani, were a group from Veneto who, under the lead of Giovanni Matteo del re detto Zanin, got together febraury 25^th 1545 in front of the notary Vincenzo Fortuna to register their act…

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