ABSTRACT
Late at night on 27 January 1557 in the freezing cold of a Roman midwinter, the body of Giovanni de Natale, who had been executed the previous day, was taken in formal procession by members of the Archconfraternity of San Giovanni Decollato to La Sapienza, the University of Rome, for dissection by Realdo Colombo in his anatomy class.1 The Archconfraternity, like many others of its kind throughout Italy, was dedicated to providing those condemned to death for felony or religious deviancy with spiritual comfort and material assistance in the hours leading up to and during their execution, and to caring for the body afterwards by removing it from the gallows and providing a Christian burial. The Archconfraternity had been founded by a group of Florentine aristocrats living in Rome, who modelled it on the Campagnia di Santa Maria della Croce established in Florence in 1343.2 Michelangelo was one of its members and was on the register from 1514 until his death in 1564.
