ABSTRACT
The link between faith and modern medical science manifest in Anna Morandi's self-portrait in fact coheres closely with the eighteenth-century epistemic culture of Bologna, especially in the realms of anatomy and medicine, was tied to enlightened professions of faith and the authority of the Catholic Church. Prospero Lambertini's own direct knowledge of contemporary medical theories and practices had developed over the twenty years he served in Rome as Promoter of the Faith. It was in Bologna while he was archbishop and later as pope that he also came to establish the first museum in Italy of human anatomy, primarily for the training of a new generation of artists in the precise representation of the human body. In diametric opposition to Ercole Lelli's scriptural framing of the anatomical body, Giovanni Manzolini aspired to place art firmly in the service of experimental science. Notably, the self-portrait visually captures key facets of Pope Benedict XIV's own science of the mind.
