Ercole Lelli Ercole Lelli Ercole Lelli (14 September 1702 – 7 March 1766) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque, active mainly in Northern Italy, including his native city of Bologna, as well as Padua and Piacenza. Lelli was a pupil of the painter Giovanni Pietro Zanotti, but he also gravitated towards sculptural work. He excelled in the study of the anatomy of the human body as well as painting. Starting in 1742 he helped prepare artistic anatomical wax displays at the University of Bologna. The wax modeler and anatomist Giovanni Manzolini worked as his assistant from 1743. Manzolini resigned in late
Anatomical theatre theatre; in Leiden, 17th-century depictions show that the living observers were actually accompanied in the rows by a large number of animal and human skeletons, some of which held banners with inscriptions such as "Memento mori", or, freely translated, "Remember, you will die". The first anatomical theatre was built at the University of Padua in 1594 and is still preserved. Other early examples include the Theatrum Anatomicum of Leiden University, built in 1596 and reconstructed in 1988, and the Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio in Bologna (whose building dates from 1563 and the anatomical theatre from 1637). The anatomical theatre