Ca. 1550 and thereafter

Skin grafts for missing or diseased noses, rediscovery in 16th c. Renaissance Italy: “We have records of two families practicing their own special techniques in Renaissance Italy. The Branca family were from Calania in Sicily and are remembered as the surgeons who ‘rediscovered’ the skin graft operation and later improved it by taking skin from the forearm rather than the forehead.” The second family, the Vianeo family from Tropea also developed a technique for taking the skin from a person’s forearm and transplant it onto their face (Craddock, 14). Skin grafts were introduced to Italian universities beginning in 1560s, when Leonardo Fioravanti, posing as a surgeon, had observed the Vaneo brothers perform rhinoplasty, introduced the brothers’ secret method to Bolognese professor of surgery Giulio Cesare Aranzio (d.1589), who began sculpting noses in Bologna. Aranzio, in turn, passed the technique on to Gaspare Tagliacozzi, who codified it in 1597 in De Curtorum Chirugia per Insitionem (On the Surgical Restoration of Defects [or: Mutilation] by Grafting) (Craddock, 40-41).