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.

[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".

The left ventricle contains an orifice with three valves and the bivalvular opening of the arteria venalis, which allows the passage of a smoke-like vapor from the lungs.

[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.

[3] Although Mondino makes frequent references to his personal dissection experiences, he nonetheless repeats numerous fallacies reported by these textual authorities.

[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.