The Anatomist Paperback - 1999

From the jacket flap

A lyrically written, sensual, and extraordinarily enjoyable novel in which a Renaissance anatomist's astonishing discovery forever changes the female erotic universe.
In sixteenth-centruy Venice, celebrated physician Mateo Colombo finds himself behind bars at the behest of the Church authorities. His is a crime of disclosure, heinous and heretical in the Church's eyes, in that his research threatens to subvert the whole secular order of Renaissance society. Like his namesake Christopher Colombus, he has made a discovery of enormous significance for humankind. Whereas Colombus voyaged outward to explore the world and found the Americas, Mateo Colombo looked inward, across the mons veneris, and uncovered the clitoris. Based on historical fact, The Anatomist is an utterly fascinating excursion into Renaissance Italy, as evocative of time and place as the work of Umberto Eco, and reminiscent of the earthy sensuality of Gabriel Garc&#237a M&#225rquez. Perceptive and stirring, it ironically exposes not only the social hypocracies of the day, but also the prejudices and sexual taboos that may still be with us four hundred years later.

Excerpt

The Dawn of Observation

"O my America, my new-found-land!" Mateo Renaldo Colombo (or Columbus, to  give him his English name) might have written in his De re anatomica.[See Note 1] Not a boastful cry like "Eureka!" but rather a mournful lament, a bitter parody of his own misadventures and misfortunes, compared to his Genoese namesake, Christopher. The same surname and, perhaps, the same destiny. But they share no common blood and the death of one takes place barely ten years after the birth of the other. Mateo's America is less distant and infinitely smaller than Christopher's; in fact, it's not much larger than the head of a nail. And yet, it was to remain secreted away until the year of the death of its discoverer and, in spite of its insignificant size, its discovery was equally momentous and disturbing.

It is the Age of the Renaissance. The verb is "To Discover." It is the  twilight of pure a priori speculation and the abuse of syllogisms,  and the dawn of empiricism, of knowledge based on what can be seen. It is,  quite precisely, the dawn of observation. Perhaps Francis Bacon in England  and Campanella in the Kingdom of Naples chanced upon the fact that while  scholastics were lost in syllogistic labyrinths, the illiterate Rodrigo de  Triana was, at the same time, shouting "Land!" and, without knowing it,  heralding in a new philosophy based on observation. Scholasticism (as the  Church had finally understood) was not profitable enough or, at least,  seemed less useful than the sale of indulgences, ever since God had  decided to soak money out of sinners.

The new science is good as long as it helps to bring in gold. It is good  as long as it doesn't contradict the truth of Holy Writ or, what is even  more important, a magistrate's writ of property. Just as the sun no longer  spun its path around the Earth (something which obviously didn't stop  happening from one moment to the next), geometry had begun to chafe  against the confines of its own paper landscape and had set off to  colonize the three-dimensional space of topology. This is the greatest  achievement of Renaissance painting: if Nature is written in mathematical  characters (as Galileo says), painting must be the source of a new vision  of Nature. The Vatican frescoes are a mathematical epic: witness the  conceptual abyss that separates Lorenzo de Monaco's Nativity from  The Triumph of the Cross over the apse of the Capella della  Pietà. For similar reasons, not a single map is left unchanged. The  cartography of Heaven changes as well as that of Earth and that of the  body. Here now are the anatomical maps that have become the new  navigational charts of surgery. And thus we return to our Mateo  Colombo.

Encouraged perhaps by the fact of sharing a name with the Genoese  admiral, Mateo Colombo decided that his destiny, too, was to discover. And  so he set off to sea. Of course, his waters were not those of his  namesake. He was the greatest anatomical explorer of his time; among his  more modest discoveries is nothing less than the circulation of the blood,  anticipating by half a century the Englishman Harvey's demonstration in  De motus cordes et sanguinis. And yet, even this astonishing  discovery is of little importance compared to his America.

The fact is that Mateo Colombo was never able to see his discovery in  print, since his book was not allowed to appear until the very year of his  death, in 1559. One had to be careful with the Doctors of the Church. The  cautionary examples are almost too numerous. Three years earlier, Lucio  Vanini "chose" to be burned by the Inquisition in spite of (or because of)  his statement declaring that he would not give his opinion on the immortality of the soul until he became "old, rich and German."[See Note 2] And certainly Mateo Colombo's discovery was far more dangerous than Lucio Vanini's opinion--even without considering the aversion our anatomist felt toward fire and the stench of burnt flesh, above all if the flesh was his own.

NOTES
1. De re anatomica, Venice, 1559, Bk XI, Ch. XVI.
2. A. Weber, A History of European Philosophy.


The Century of Women

The sixteenth century was the century of women. The seed sowed a hundred years earlier by Christine de Pisan flowered throughout Europe with the sweet scent of The Sayinge of True Lovers. It is certainly not by chance that Mateo Colombo's discovery took place when and where it did. Until the sixteenth century, history had been recounted in a deep masculine voice. "Wherever one looks, there she is, always present: from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, always on the domestic, economic, intellectual, and public stage, on the battlefront and in moments of private leisure, we find the Woman. Usually, she is busy at her daily tasks. But she is also present in the events that build, transform or tear apart society. From one end to the other of the social spectrum, she occupies all places and those who watch her constantly speak of her presence, often with fear," write Natalie Zemon and Arlette Farge in their  History of Women.[See Note 1]

Mateo Colombo's discovery happens precisely when women, whose place had always been indoors, began to conquer, gradually and subtly, the world outside, emerging from behind the walls of convents and retreats, from whorehouses or from the warm but no less monastic sweetness of home. Timidly, woman dares argue with man. With some exaggeration, it has been said that the "battle of the sexes" begins in the sixteenth century. Whether this is true or not, this is the age in which womanly matters become an acceptable subject for discussion among men.

Under these circumstances, what was Mateo Colombo's "America"? No doubt, the borders between discovery and invention are far more vague than they might seem at first glance. Mateo Colombo (the time has come to say it) discovered that which every man has dreamt of at some moment or other: the magic key that unlocks women's hearts, the secret that governs the mysterious driving force of female love; that which, from the beginnings of History, wizards and witches, shamans and alchemists, have sought by means of brews, all manner of herbs or through the favor of gods or demons; that which every man in love has always longed for, when wounded, through unkindness, by the object of his troubles and sorrows. And also, of course, that which is dreamt of by kings and rulers in their sheer lust for omnipotence: namely, the instrument that subjugates the volatile female will. Mateo Colombo searched, traveled and finally found the "sweet land" he longed for: "the organ that governs the love of women." The Amor Veneris (such is the name the anatomist gave it, "if I may be allowed to give a name to the things by me discovered") was the true source of power over the slippery, shadowy free will of women. Certainly, such a finding had many serious consequences. "To what calamities would Christianity not be subjected if the female object of sin were to fall into the hands of the hosts of Satan?" the scandalized Doctors of the Church asked. "What would become of the profitable business of prostitution if any poor hunchback might obtain the love of the most expensive of courtesans?" asked the rich proprietors of the splendid Venetian brothels. And, worst of all, what would happen if the daughters of Eve were to discover that, between their legs, they carried the keys to both Heaven and Hell?

The discovery of Mateo Colombo's America was, all things considered, an epic counterpointed by an elegy. Mateo Colombo was as fierce and heartless as Christopher. Like Christopher (to use an appropriate metaphor) he was a brutal colonizer who claimed for himself all rights to the discovered land, the female body.

Beyond what Amor Veneris meant to society, another controversy was sparked by what it was really supposed to be. Did the organ discovered by Mateo Colombo actually exist? Perhaps this is a useless question which must be replaced by another: did the Amor Veneris ever exist? Ultimately, things are nothing but the words that name them. Amor Veneris, vel Dulcedo Apeletur (the full name with which its discoverer christened the organ) had a strong heretical ring to it. The question of whether the Amor Veneris coincides with the less apostate and more neutral kleitoris ("tickling"), which alludes to effects rather than causes, is one that would later concern historians of the body. The Amor Veneris existed for reasons other than anatomical; it existed not only because it inaugurated a New Woman but also because it sparked a tragedy.

What follows is the story of a discovery.

What follows is the chronicle of a tragedy.

NOTES
1. A History of Women in the West, Harvard, 1993.

The Trinity

On the other side of Monte Veldo, in the Via Bocciari, close to the Church of the Holy Trinity, stood the Bordello del Fauno Rosso, the most expensive whorehouse in Venice, whose splendor had no rival in the whole of the western world. The brothel's main attraction was Mona Sofia, the most expensive whore in Venice: in the whole of Europe none could be called more splendid. She was greater even than the legendary Lenna Grifa and, just like Lenna Grifa, Mona Sofia toured the streets of Venice reclining on a covered litter, borne by two Moorish slaves. Just like Lenna Grifa, Mona Sofia kept at the litter's head a Dalmatian bitch, and a parrot perched on her shoulder. In the Catalogo di tutte le puttane del bordello con il lor prezzo,[See Note 1] her name appeared printed in bold letters and her price in even more remarkable numbers: 10 ducats. That is to say, six ducats more expensive than the legendary Lenna Grifa.[See Note 2] In the catalog, carefully compiled and edited for discerning travelers, no mention was made of her eyes green as emeralds, nor of her nipples hard as almonds whose diameter and texture might be compared to the petals of a flower--if ever there were such petals of the diameter and texture of Mona Sofia's nipples. Nor did it make mention of her firm animal thighs, as if rounded on a lathe, nor of her voice like crackling wood. It made no mention of her tiny hands that seemed hardly large enough to encircle a male organ, nor of her diminutive mouth whose cavity one would have thought unable to receive a fully engorged member. Nor did it mention her whorish talents, capable of arousing even an enfeebled old man.


Early one winter's morning in the year 1558, shortly before the sun appeared halfway between the two granite columns brought back from Syria and Constantinople, crowned with the winged lion and with St. Theodore, just when the automated Moors in the clock tower were about to strike the first of their six chimes, Mona Sofia saw off her last client, a wealthy silk merchant. Climbing down the stairs of the brothel, the man wrapped himself in the woolen shawl he wore over his lucco, pulled his beretta over his eyebrows and, peering across the threshold, made sure that no one saw him leave. From the brothel, he walked straight to the Holy Trinity whose bells were calling the faithful to early Mass.

Mona Sofia felt weary. Her back ached. To her annoyance, when she drew the purple silk curtains of her bedroom window, she saw that dawn had already risen. She hated having to fall asleep amid the bustle from outside, and she told herself that this was a good opportunity to take full advantage of the day. Reclining against the headboard of her bed, she started making plans. First she would dress like a lady and go to Mass at St. Mark's Cathedral (the truth be told, it was quite a long time since she had been to Mass); she would go to confession and then, free of remorse, she would pay a visit to the Bottega del Moro to buy several perfumes which she had long promised herself. She went on making plans, drawing the blankets a little closer (after the tiring night, this first moment of rest had begun to muddle her thoughts) and she closed her eyes in order to think more clearly.

The bells had not yet stopped ringing when Mona Sofia, just as she did every morning, fell into a deep and placid sleep.

About the same time, but in Florence, a fine rain was falling on the bell tower of the modest Abbey of San Gabriele. The bells rang with such determination, one would have said a fat abbot and not a woman with delicate hands was pulling the ropes. With the punctual devotion that every morning drew her from her bed before dawn, in cold weather or hot, in rain or frost, Inés de Torremolinos swung from the ropes with her light frame and, as if the Almighty Himself were aiding her, she succeeded in swaying the bells whose weight was no less than a thousand times that of her feminine and immaculate body.

Inés de Torremolinos lived in Franciscan austerity in spite of being one of the wealthiest women in Florence. The eldest daughter of an aristocratic Spanish couple, she had been still very young when she was wedded to a distinguished Florentine lord. Following the rules of marriage, she left her native Castile to live in her husband's palazzo in Florence. Fate decreed that Inés was to become a widow without giving her husband a new link to continue his noble lineage: she gave birth to three daughters and not a single son.

As a young widow, all that Inés owned was this: the sorrow of not having given birth to a boy, a few olive groves, vineyards, castles, money, and a charitable and pious soul. Therefore, in order to forget her pain and mend her faults in memory of the departed, she decided to turn into cash all the property and goods she had inherited from her late husband (in Florence) and from her father (in Castile), and with this fortune build an abbey. In this way she would remain forever united with her lamented husband by means of a pure and celibate existence, and she would dedicate her life to the service of the male children her womb had been incapable of producing: in other words, the monastic community and the poor. And so she did.

One might have called Inés a happy woman. Her Franciscan eyes radiated peace and tranquillity. Her words were an unending balm for the tormented. She consoled the disconsolate and she guided the lost sheep back on the right path. One would have said there were no obstacles on her road to sainthood.

On that dawn in 1558, at the same time as, in Venice, Mona Sofia was ending her exhausting and profitable night, Inés de Torremolinos was beginning her day of happy and charitable works. Neither woman had any knowledge of the remote existence of the other. Nothing would have led them to suppose that they had something in common. And yet fate at times carves a path through the impossible. Without the slightest suspicion of their destiny, without being aware of one another, each woman was to become a point of the same trinity whose apex was in Padua.

NOTES
1. Catalog of all the Whores of the Brothel with Their Prices: A catalog mentioned in D. Merejkovski, Leonardo da Vinci, Putnam, 1992.

2. It should be noted that a thousand ducats was a fortune sufficient


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

"Charmingly salacious...shows off the wonderful wit and narrative gifts of a welcome new Latin American writer." --National Public Radio

"Compelling and complex." --Philadelphia City Paper

"A fascinating book. The way Andahazi communicates the sense of exploration and possibility in Renaissance science and the inextricable links with philosophy and religion are extremely effective...gripping, a pleasure to read, and a very fine novel." --Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost

"With The Anatomist, Andahazi deftly mines that delicious vein of wit and sensuality that runs from Boccaccio to Fellini, while slyly dissecting one of man's oldest obsessions: a woman's pleasure." --Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate

Citations

• Ingram Advance, 10/01/1999, Page 136