Is it possible to do justice to the history of an object using the traditional academic medium of text? This is a question which plagues current material-culture scholarship, and is one to which this volume may present an answer. Joanna Ebenstein, until recently the curator of the Morbid Anatomy collection in New York, presents us with an extensive object history in The Anatomical Venus. This is an ambitious project which aims to broadly contextualize the seventeenth-century Anatomical Venus waxwork models for both an academic and a general audience.

Ebenstein builds upon the work of numerous academics in her amalgamation of information about Clement Susini's Anatomical Venus. She explores the histories of wax, fetishism, model making and religious adoration to completely contextualize the Venus, from its design through to its various roles and uses. However, this volume goes beyond a mere collection of information otherwise gleaned. In both the structure and the carefully selected focuses of this book, Ebenstein attempts to analyse not only the Anatomical Venus per se but also humankind's ongoing fascination with her.

Chapter 1 situates the Anatomical Venus model within its immediate context, the hands of Susini at the workshop of Felice Fontana in the Museum of Zoology and Natural History (La Specola), Florence. This chapter focuses on the visual form of the Venus model itself, in particular the cultural and visual inspiration for the Venus sculpture provided by the artistic treasures of Italy and the textual works of prominent anatomists. Here Ebenstein draws heavily on the work of Alessandro Riva, director of the modern Cagliari museum, and Roberta Ballestriero, as well as in part from the work of Anna Maerker on the construction of the models as epistemically authoritative objects. Herein is also contained a short discussion of the form and style of other anatomical models created by different modellers during the same period. The chapter finishes with a description of the practical steps and processes involved in the construction of a Venus model, evidently informed by the expertise of artist and ceroplastician Eleanor Crook.

The second chapter explores the traditional religious uses of wax, simultaneously emphasizing the lifelike properties of wax whilst linking the material to death rituals beginning in ancient Egypt. In what Ebenstein terms the ‘Catholic fetishization of the corporeal body’ (p. 81), she connects the religious re-creation of the saintly body in the Counter-Reformation and the scientific anatomical wax models of the Florentine workshop. Ebenstein emphasizes the mimetic observation of the natural world seen in the creation of anatomical votives for Catholic pilgrimages, as well as in anatomical memento mori of the seventeenth century. As such, she draws the link between religious votives and anatomical waxworks, tracing the career of the memento mori artist Zumbo who later went on to create scientific anatomical waxworks, one of which is displayed alongside the Anatomical Venus herself. Most importantly, this chapter illustrates how the conception of an idealized body was constructed over centuries.

In the third chapter Ebenstein describes the alternative uses of Anatomical Venus models for public moralization and amusement. Drawing on the work of Michael Sappol, Elizabeth Stephens and Alan Bates, Ebenstein provides a history of the public anatomical museum in London. Here Ebenstein explores the use of a scientific context to legitimize the female nudity of the Anatomical Venus. However, this chapter leaves the reader yearning for more; there is an untold story about the perceived educational value of the Venus models in comparison with the wide range of items by which they might be surrounded.

Meanwhile, Ebenstein's fourth chapter moves on to analyse our changing attitudes towards ecstasy and sexuality with relation to the Anatomical Venus. By placing the sexuality of the Venus within its original context, where religious and sexual ecstasy once coexisted, Ebenstein questions our modern separation of devotion and pleasure. In particular, Ebenstein describes the categorization by Ludmilla Jordanova in Sexual Visions (1989) of these models as ‘ambiguous’ as a product of a contemporary dichotomy that we have created between physical ecstasy and religion. Furthermore, in her exploration of the history of doll fetishism and necrophilia, Ebenstein insinuates that our attraction to the Venus perhaps shows that archaic ways of thinking are more relevant than we realize.

The final chapter picks up on this point, exploring the modern psyche through an examination of the discomfort we feel at the sight of this contradictory object – simultaneously medical and sexual, dead and alive. In particular, Ebenstein builds upon Freud's notion of ‘the uncanny’, showing how these anatomical models uncomfortably straddle our distinctions between self and other. Ebenstein concludes that the Anatomical Venus is ‘a reminder that science and its artefacts are never truly neutral’ (p. 213).

In making these points, Ebenstein creates a wonderful visual narrative that lets the forms speak for themselves. Every object or image discussed is presented around the text with provenance and additional annotations. As a result, not only does the reader become immersed in the extensive imagery, but also the book acts as a good example of how object histories might be told using objects themselves. As such, this is both an exciting addition to the field of material-culture studies and a beautiful coffee-table book.

In the creation of a book composed of more images than words, Ebenstein has created two things: a history of objects by objects, and a good starting position for any budding historian of anatomical models and imagery. This book, probably as a result of input from the publisher, lacks the complete in-text references many of us as historians would expect in order to be able to follow up on specific points made by the author. However, the bibliography illustrates a comprehensive grasp of the literature in such a contained field of study, which, combined with the volume of illustrations, shows the extent of the research on which this publication has been built. As such, Ebenstein's book serves not only as an interesting recontextualization of the Anatomical Venus models, but also as a solid introduction to the history of ceroplastics and anatomical modelling, from which further interest in the topic can be explored.