How and why make the invisible visible? This is the question raised by the uterus: hidden from view like any internal organ, the uterus also has the distinction of being present, and therefore potentially visible, in only half of the human species. Since seeing the uterus first-hand requires special techniques, we must examine the relationship between these techniques, the anatomical knowledge they produce, and the organ’s representations.

A hidden organ, the focus of a scopic impulse

Although (or because) it is invisible to the naked eye, the uterus is the focus of a scopic impulse*, as evidenced by the proliferation of instruments designed to view it.

The first of these instruments is the speculum. Although the name only appeared during the Renaissance, the object itself has existed since ancient times: the presence of two-, three-, or four-pronged bronze vaginal retractors, whose opening is controlled by a screw system, can be traced back to the Roman Empire. The three-pronged bronze speculum (fig. 1) is equipped with a screw and two arms to open the prongs and spread the vaginal walls (23 * 12 cm). In addition to its practical aspect, it also had an aesthetic dimension: the screw ended in acanthus foliage and the two arms in snake heads.

The tool continued to appear sporadically in doctors’ equipment from the 16^th to the 17^th century. When Récamier designed a conical speculum with solid walls made of pewter in the early 19^th century, he was not so much inventing as reinventing the tool. It quickly underwent a series of modifications (such as a slit in the tube), intended in particular to enlarge the field of vision and improve access to the cervix. The growing popularity of the instrument in major European cities, due in particular to increased surveillance of prostitutes, was accompanied by the spread of additional devices, such as the examination lamp and the gynaecological chair. This truly “gynaecological device,” which exposes the interior of women’s bodies to those who control it—mainly men—has hardly been altered to this day. However, since the 1960s and the second wave of feminism, the teaching of self-examination practices has been part of a move towards women reclaiming this curiosity about the organ and the techniques for observing it.

Before the advent of medical imaging, the second instrument of seeing was dissection. Appearing in ancient Greece at the beginning of the 3^rd century BC, human dissection then disappeared, only to be practiced again from the 13^th century onwards, initially in Italy. However, it was in the early 16^th century that anatomical science truly underwent a paradigm shift: modern anatomy was born, based on the direct observation made possible by dissecting human bodies. Anatomists who practiced it then used printed and illustrated books to show the public what had previously escaped science, particularly the female genital apparatus. Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a physician who taught surgery in Bologna, was the first, in 1521, to publish a work showing engravings of women exhibiting their anatomy to the public. In the first of these (fig. 2), the unveiling of the female figure, whose posture recalls Botticelli’s Venus, is an allegory of the knowledge that the book itself claims to produce: in a gesture of self-dissection through which she reveals her pregnant uterus to the reader, the woman thus establishes it as an object of completely renewed anatomical knowledge.

The anatomical knowledge made possible by these techniques for understanding the organ has also influenced the representations made of it.

Showing the uterus: forms and functions of “realistic” representations

“Realistic” representations evolve according to knowledge and access to the organ.

Until the contemporary period, however, their purposes were broadly identical: to enable the uterus, considered from the perspective of its reproductive function, to be properly filled and emptied.

In 1758, Madame du Coudray, a midwife at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, published a manual on childbirth. It was accompanied by a “machine” or “phantom,” a demonstration model representing the lower part of a female torso, accompanied by various accessories intended to serve as teaching aids for future midwives throughout France. Although the first “machines” appeared in Sweden in the early 18^th century, Madame du Coudray’s remains the most famous. Among the accessories showing female anatomy are several fabric representations of the uterus, depicting the different stages of pregnancy. The last of these pieces (fig. 3), known as the “full-term womb,” measures 40 centimetres for this reason. To represent the membrane and facilitate the passage of the foetus during the demonstration, the piece is lined, and silk ribbons (originally bright pink) are used to attach the uterus to the inside of the mannequin.

At the same time, anatomical wax models also represented the uterus, among other organs, notably those of the Italian Felice Fontana, which caught Napoleon Bonaparte’s attention. They were used as alternative teaching aids to the dissection of corpses. From the 1820s onwards, however, Louis Auzoux, a graduate of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, began to manufacture body parts and then entire bodies (human and animal) out of glued and molded cardboard, which could be dismantled and reassembled and, unlike anatomical wax models, reproduced in series. These “clastic” anatomical models were intended for future doctors and surgeons (or veterinarians), then gradually distributed on a larger scale (middle schools, high schools). While the first male dissected model dates from 1830, it was not until 1858 that its female counterpart was created. This was accompanied by fourteen foetuses at different stages of pregnancy, all stored in a “box” that opened and closed: the uterus. Figure 4 shows a uterus at four months of pregnancy. These uterine representations were realistic, which guaranteed their educational value, but their aesthetic quality meant that Auzoux’s objects, like Fontana’s wax models before them, quickly caught contemporary artists’ eyes. During the 20^th century, they acquired the status of art objects sought after by collectors.

These representations, whose realism can be explained by their primarily practical and educational purpose, contrast with many others in which the reference to the organ is indirect or oblique.

Showing without revealing: oblique representations of the uterus

In line with texts such as Plato’s Timaeus, which endow the organ with a life of its own by comparing it to an animal, the uterus was likened by the ancient Greeks to various animals. As shown in Figure 5, a gynaecological amulet intended to protect pregnancies, the octopus occupies a prominent place among them (see the notice “A world unto itself”).

Such a metaphor can be explained by the difficulty of accessing the organ and the resulting very limited anatomical knowledge, on which analogical thinking thrives. Whether based on animal comparants (octopus, frog, or hedgehog), plants (pomegranate or pear), or artifacts (vase, chalice, oven, or drawer), these metaphorical representations of the uterus can serve a discursive strategy of devaluation or valorisation of the organ and the beings that carry it. They are part of a long tradition and many of them have persisted into the contemporary period. This use of imagery is therefore less and less attributable to a lack of anatomical knowledge. It seems to express a persistent reluctance to describe or represent the uterus without resorting to figurative language.

Another form of oblique representation of the uterus can be seen in Michelangelo’s work, The Creation of Adam (fig. 6). The famous fresco by this artist, who was particularly well versed in anatomy, has in fact been the subject of multiple interpretations, including several anatomical ones. Some critics have suggested that God's cloak represents a brain, but as early as 1955, Adrian Stokes referred to this piece as a “uterine cloak”; this hypothesis was taken up and developed in 2006 by Italian scientists A. L. Tranquilli, A. Luccarini, and M. Emanuelli, who suggested that the divine mantle is a human uterus and the scene depicts a genuine birth. While Sistine Chapel ceiling may conceal a giant womb, these interpretations above all highlight the significance of representations of the uterus as a hidden organ that the human gaze must literally uncover.

Such an example prompts us to question the conditions under which the organ is aestheticized: how does the uterus become, in the contemporary era, the subject of a truly artistic representation?

How is the organ aestheticized?

Two opposing trends have been emerging. The first is the reappropriation of the organ by feminist artists, exemplified by Faith Wilding’s installation known as “Womb Room” (fig. 7), originally presented in Hollywood in 1972.

In a small room framed by black walls, a crocheted piece resembling a spider’s web is suspended, its intertwining threads forming a hut. The uterus is therefore not only made visible, but also tangible: viewers can enter and sit in the middle of it, experiencing contradictory sensations of serenity, security, or a feeling of imprisonment and danger. Along with other works (such as Niki de Saint-Phalle’s), this installation – which reappropriates images of the uterus that have become commonplace (cavity, house, thread, or weaving) without reducing the organ to its reproductive function alone – is a way for artists to reclaim an organ they now have control over, as women and as creators.

In contrast to this first type of resolutely feminist aestheticization stands a second trend, exemplified by Damien Hirst's fourteen giant sculptures of full uteruses, installed in front of a maternity hospital in Doha, Qatar, since 2013. In this collection entitled The Miraculous Journey, each bronze statue represents a stage of pregnancy—as did Auzoux’s fourteen boxed foetuses 150 years earlier—in a style that is realistic overall, were it not for the size of the sculptures. The collection constitutes what Bénédicte Percheron calls a “new cabinet of curiosities,” where the way the organ is displayed to the public follows the codes of modern-day cabinets, but without the pretension of being a work of science not so much.

Bibliography

H. Cazes, « Le corps des livres (I) : une allégorie de l’anatomie féminine (Jacopo Berenagario da Carpi, Commentarii… 1521) », disponible sur https://histoirelivre.hypotheses.org/4347#identifier_5_4347

C. Husquin, « Speculum », in L. Bodiou, V. Mehl (dir.), Dictionnaire du corps dans l’Antiquité, Rennes, PUR, 2019, p. 589.

B. Percheron, « Nouveaux cabinets de curiosités : de l’anatomie clastique d’Auzoux à la décoration contemporaine », Études normandes, 2013, 2, p. 43-52.

C. Renner, « À propos du speculum d’étain de Récamier », Histoire des sciences médicales, XL, 4, 2006, p. 345-350.

A. L. Tranquilli, A. Luccarini, M. Emanuelli, « The Creation of Adam and God-placenta », The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, February 2007, p. 83-87, disponible sur <https://doi.org/10.1080/14767050601135196>