Under the typical portici of via San Vitale, in Bologna, a few meters to the left from the main entrance to the church of the SS. Vitale and Agricola, two gravestones can be seen immured into the wall.
They belong to the celebrated anatomist Mondino de Liuzzi and to his uncle Liuzzo, also a medicine teacher.
The gravestones probably derive form the medieval cemetery of the church, which was rebuilt in the XV century, absorbing the cemetery in the new buildings. Probably the two gravestones were already in the present position when the bolognese physician Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512) made reference to them as located "in the wall … of Saint Vitale".
The gravestone of Liuzzo's tomb, with the memorial inscription, was sculpted at his death in 1318 by Rosso da Parma. The little tombstone remembering also Mondino's burial was added at his death in 1326 or after. The latin inscription, with abbreviations, reads as follows: "S[epulcrum] MAG[istro]RUM LEUCII ET MONDINI DE LUCCIS ET EORUM HEREDUM" (Grave of teachers Liuzzo and Mondino de Liuzzi and of their heirs)1.
- Photos by Luca Borghi ti.supmacinu|ihgrob.l#| (april 2008)
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Bibliography
- L.S.Pilcher, The Mondino Myth, in Medical Library and Historical Journal, Vol. 4, No. 4 (december 1906), pp. 311-330