He is often credited as the restorer of anatomy because he made seminal contributions to the field by reintroducing the practice of public dissection of human cadavers and writing the first modern anatomical text.

[3][4] He was born around 1270 into the prominent Florentine de Luzzi family with loyalties to the Ghibellines[1] and inscribed to the Società dei Toschi,[1] a medieval institution of Bologna for people from Tuscany.

[6] During his schooling, Mondino was a pupil of Thaddeus of Florence (Taddeo Alderotti), who made significant contributions to the development of medicine at Bologna, and a fellow student of Henri de Monteville.

His granite tomb is adorned with a bas-relief, sculpted by Boso of Parma, which depicts an instructor seated in a large chair lecturing to students.

These bans were eventually lifted, allowing Mondino to perform his first public dissection in Bologna in January 1315 in the presence of medical students and other spectators; the subject was mostly likely a female executed criminal.

Additionally, Mondino argued that distinct dissection methods should be applied to simple structures (such as bones, muscles, nerves, veins, and arteries) as compared to more complex composite parts (for example, the eye, ear, liver, and spleen.

[13] Mondino's major work, Anathomia corporis humani, written in 1316, is considered the first example of a modern dissection manual and the first true anatomical text.

[9] Dissection began with the opening of the abdominal cavity via vertical incision running from the stomach to the pectoral muscles and a horizontal cut above the navel.

In order to access the spleen, which was thought to secrete black bile into the stomach through imaginary canals, the dissector was required to remove the "false ribs".

[20] Mondino describes the closure of an incised intestinal wound by having large ants bite on its edges and then cutting off their heads, which one scholar interprets as an anticipation of the use of staples in surgery.

[22] Mondino's treatment of the skull provides only inexact directions for its dissection, suggesting that the cranial cavity was opened infrequently and with little technical skill.

[24] For example, he propagates the incorrect Galenic notion that a rete mirabile ("miraculous network") of blood vessels exists at the base of the human brain when it is in fact present only in ungulates.