It took me a minute to realize why the Wax Museum of Madrid smelled like church. The odor I had always assumed was incense used for ritual purposes is, in fact, the smell of votive candles. Votive candles and wax statues of major figures in Spanish history and culture.
I’m currently writing a new biography of Moses Maimonides for a medieval lives series that will include images. My editor encouraged me to find images that are freely available to use through creative commons license or other means. As I was looking for images to include with my book proposal, I discovered that there is a likeness of Maimonides in the Madrid Wax Museum, but I couldnt’ find any photos that would be good enough to use for publication so I went to take my own.
Behold Wax Maimonides (r) and Wax Averroes (r) in the wax Nasrid-style palace that holds all of the Andalusi figures, regardless of whether they lived in any kind of temporal or geographic proximity to Nasrid Granada.
