Human Half Brain Anatomical "maître modele" in Plaster, Auzoux

Anatomical cut of one eye, composition in natural painted papier-maché, with numbered labels on the different elements / the opening eyeball to cover the removable pute. Pen annotati...

Anatomical cut of a human skull composed in natural painted papier-maché, with numbered labels on the different elements

Sinke & van Tongeren exhibited this extremely rare Auzoux Gorilla by carefully taking apart the model and creating an exploded view of this historically important piece. When viewed from a particular angle all pieces come together to form the original shape. It was part of the exhibition called ‘TIER’ at MOA in The Netherlands The story of a remarkable 19th century anatomical model created just four years after Darwin unleashed a political storm with his theories on human evolution. The publication of Charles Darwin’s controversial On the Origin of Species in 1859 caused debates to rage about human evolution, debates which witnessed the politicisation of a creature whose existence had only recently been confirmed by modern science. On one side of the argument was the Darwinian camp; on the other were those opposed to Darwin’s theory, such as Richard Owen, the famed Director of the Natural History Museum and a man who, interestingly, coined the word ‘dinosaur’. Tales of the creature in question had endured for centuries, but up until 1847 it remained a myth, an unknown. This all changed thanks to the missionary Thomas Savage and the anatomist Jeffries Wyman who wrote a paper for the journal of the Boston Society of Natural History in which they described a new species: Troglodytes gorilla. (Later, in 1929, Harvard zoologist Harold Coolidge would apply the synonym Gorilla gorilla...

Rare old anatomical plaster model of the alligator brain. Beautiful details on a bakelite base. Worn but still in beautiful condition and as shown in t...

Rare old anatomical plaster model of the dog's brain. Beautiful details on a plastic/bakelite base. Worn (small cracks, base repare) but still in good condition as shown in the image...

Didactic model of the human ear, painted plaster, made in 1950s by Somso, a German company active since the second half of the nineteenth century, known as an excellence in the devel...