We welcome you to the
3rd International Congress on Wax Modelling

We are delighted to invite you to the third International Congress on Wax Modelling that will take place on September 4-6 2025 at the Palace of the School of Medicine in Mexico City. The inaugural edition of Ceroplastics – International Congress of Wax Modelling took place in London on September 1–3, 2017, at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, King’s College. This event was organised in collaboration with The Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers and Madame Tussauds. The second congress was held in 2019 at the University of Padua, in partnership with the CAM (University Museums Centre), the Morgagni Museum of Pathological Anatomy, and the ANMS (Association of Scientific Museums).

This edition will be hosted by in the Palace of the School of Medicine, of the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
This historic baroque building, built between 1732 to 1736 by the architect Pedro de Arrieta to house the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition now welcomes the Museum of Mexican Medicine which allows us to reconstruct the history of medical sciences from the Pre-Hispanic era to the early 20th century.
After a break of forty years between the first pioneering congresses in Florence and London, and the following two in the 21st century in London and Padua, the event moved across the ocean where the art of wax modelling, after years of artistic and scientific tradition, is still alive and thriving today.

Again, this event will be a perfect opportunity to exchange expertise, knowledge and ideas, welcoming experts, professionals and artists from the fields of Art History, History, Religion, Portraiture, Museology, Conservation, Restoration, Collections, Sculpture, Artisanship, Techniques, Materials, Science and Anatomy.
Papers, in English or Spanish, are invited that broadly address the theme of ceroplastics or wax modelling in the topics previously mentioned.

Submitted papers, as in the previous meetings, will be published in a Book of Proceedings with the publisher “L’Erma di Bretschneider”. The articles will be subject to a peer review process by the congress committee.

The “International Congress on Wax Modelling” is an independent event conceived and organised by Dr Roberta Ballestriero who has spent thirty years researching the art of ceroplastics (wax modelling) in its different forms. After the previous two meetings, where more than one hundred participants from different countries met in Europe for days dedicated to the study, conservation, development and protection of collections and works of art created in wax, we look forward to seeing you, online or in attendance in Mexico City next September to continue the debate on art and science

Download the invitation letter here