Anatomical machines Giuseppe Salerno, an anatomist from Palermo, around 1763. Some legends, disproved by modern studies, account for the direct involvement of the prince in the building process, while in fact he only bought them. A contract, found in the notary archive of Naples, states that di Sangro provided to Salerno metal wire and wax for the work. They were described in detail for the first time in the "Breve Nota" (short note), an 18th-century guide to Palazzo di Sangro and its neigh chapel. It also accounts the existence of a third machine, a fetus complete with placenta: it was exposed together
18th century and the classical period (including Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). The 18th century also marked the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as an independent state. The once-powerful and vast kingdom, which had once conquered Moscow and defeated great Ottoman armies, collapsed under numerous invasions. Its semi-democratic government system was not robust enough to rival the neighboring monarchies of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire which divided the Commonwealth territories between themselves, changing the landscape of Central European politics for the next hundred years. European colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world