From the moment they made their first appearance in the 16^th century, anatomical theatres constituted a common ground for the staging of many different ways of looking at the body. With the intent of deepening the knowledge of reality via observation in these places, the medical sciences came together here and formed connections with the artistic desire to investigate the depths beneath the skin, driven both by the typically Renaissance desire for exploration and the Baroque desire for contemplation of the flesh. In the scenic set-up of the dissection, the person operating at the centre of the theatre both displayed and was on display, in a mise en abîme of the body, mainly based on a visual perception which, through drawing, integrated and restored a particular tactile quality that was able to assimilate bodily forms via gesture and sign.

The scenic construction of the anatomical theatre for Sublime Anatomie was inspired by the morphology of the amphitheatre of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, which Philippe Comar – an artist himself and co-curator of the exhibition – transformed into a fully-fledged art studio for drawing from life, substituting corpses with living models and restoring an element of dynamism to the direct observation of the body.

The anatomical theatre of Sublime Anatomie aimed both to return the sensitive body to its central role and to propose an overturning or redefinition of the relationships which are established between subject and object, the observed and the observer, within the exhibition area. This was made possible by the Neoclassical architecture of Palazzo delle Esposizioni, with its series of galleries fanning out from a central rotunda where trajectories and vanishing points intersect. This specific feature enabled a multiplicity of different complementary elements to interact in a theatrical way, suggesting new interpretations of the exhibition idea, indeed of a new model of exhibition. A model in which the inanimate works and documents on show acquired meaning from and gave meaning to the animated bodies of the performers, teachers, models, students. All this in turn activated the body and the observation of visitors, who found themselves inevitably caught in an ambivalent position, half inside and half outside the action – within and around it. This was an exhibition model in which the function/exhibition was linked to, and influenced by, teaching practices (lesson or open laboratory of life drawing, conference) and performances (choreography, theatrical performance). (cp,lp)