17th century dioramas made from human remains—with fun names like “Ah Fate, ah Bitter Fate!”—by a dutch anatomist. he eventually sold his collection to tsar peter the great, who became very emotionally invested in these scenes (he once kissed the forehead of a particularly beautifully preserved baby). some say that a few of them were destroyed when russian sailors broke them open and drank the embalming fluid on the voyage to st. petersburg (okay??), but most made it to the tsar’s “kunstkamera” (lol), or cabinet of curiosities
pro: weird, charming, memento mori, etc.
con: involved a lot of infant skeletons (troubling, gross)
there are lots of detailed drawings left of these things and they’re interesting to read about. neat!
