G irolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente, doctor, who lived between 1533 and 1619, was anatomy professor for fifty years at the Padua University.
To better teach his students and, more in general, to create a work never conceived nor completed by anyone, the scholar ordered the creation of a series of large anatomic boards – known as “paintings coloured with anatomy” which had to portray the human body in detail as well as the anatomic features of certain animals.
This ambitious project, entitled “Totius animalis fabricae theatrum”, was never completed, even if in 1600 more that three hundred boards had been created.
Many of them – more than two hundred – are preserved at the “Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana” of Venice.  The show “Il teatro dei corpi – Le pitture colorate d’anatomia di Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente” – “The Theatre of the Bodies - paintings coloured with anatomy by Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente”, in the “Sale Monumentali” of the “Biblioteca Marciana” from 17th December to 8th May 2005 – conceived and organized by Maurizio Rippa Bonati, aims at displaying the Fabrici’s boMUSEUMS ards – the most real and extraordinary Renaissance anatomic atlas handed down to us intact – just as they are, in colours, full-sized and with a three-dimensional modality.
The word “theatre” mentioned in the title underlines that it is the place where anatomic dissections are carried out: the most ancient one of the Padua University was build in the period in which Fabrici worked as a professor.  The word, according to a widespread Reinassance tradition, indicated any kind of exhibition, both physical and “virtual”, like the work conceived by the Paduan doctor.
The symbol chosen to represent the show is the hand, which couldn’t be more fitting since this limb – with the musculature manoeuvring fingers – has been studied both by anatomists and by artists (painters and sculptors) in the attempt to portray it in the most faithful way: let us only think about Leonardo da Vinci and the Tiepolos.
The show is hosted in the “Sale Monumentali” of the “Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana”, precisely in the “Sala dei Filosofi” also “Sala del Sansovino”, which has been named after the architect who designed the Library.
The precious volumes and the single boards are placed in twelve large glass cases, all of them exhaustively explained by twelve panels with legends explaining the meaning of each precious work.