Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656-1701) was the most famous Italian wax sculptor, known mainly for his “teatrini” or models with gruesome subjects kept in the Medici collections; he was also responsible for the first anatomical work in wax, a man’s head belonging to Grand Prince Ferdinando now kept with his other Florentine works in the Museo della Specola in Florence. In Genoa, where he went after leaving the Medici court, Zumbo produced a ‘Nativity’ and a ‘Deposition’, works he took with him to Paris together with a new ‘Anatomical head’. Through a series of unpublished documents, the paper traces the vicissitudes and critical fortune of these two waxes, which enjoyed greater success in France than the Florentine compositions, the best known of Zumbo’s works to this day; it also traces the successive changes of ownership, starting with the first owner, the painter Élizabeth Sophie Chéron, who purchased them directly from Zumbo shortly before his death. In 1814 the two waxes were presented in an exhibition at the Palais-Royal which also included Sebastiano del Piombo’s portrait of Cristopher Columbus, now in the Metropolitan Museum. Unpublished documents provide new hypotheses on the acquisition of the painting by Charles-Maurice Talleyrand, until now considered its owner at that time.