Title: The mastery of nature : aspects of art, science, and humanism in the Renaissance /
Authors: Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta.
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Renaissance; Art, Renaissance; Architecture, Renaissance.; Science, Renaissance; Art history; Architecture history; Technology history; Humanism history
Abstract: "Responding to ongoing debates over the role of humanism in the rise of empirical science, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann explores the history of Renaissance art to help explain the complex beginnings of the "scientific revolution." In a rich collection of new and previously published essays addressing conceptions of the mastery of nature, he discusses the depiction of nature in works of art, scientific approaches to understanding the world, and imperial claims to world control. This interdisciplinary approach elucidates the varying ways art, science, and humanism interact." "This book contains a new assessment of the origins of trompe l'oeil illumination in manuscript painting in response to religious devotional practices; an account of the history of shadow projection in art theory in relation to perspective, astronomy, and optics; an analysis of poems by the painter Georg Hoefnagel demonstrating how religious, philosophical, and political concerns impinge on questions of imitation; ground-breaking interpretations of Arcimboldo's paintings of composite heads as imperial allegories; an account of a poet-astronomer's collaboration with artists; an essay on "Ancients" and "Moderns" in art and science in Prague; and a new review of art, politics, science, and the Kunstkammer."--Jacket.
Contents: The sanctification of nature : observations on the origins of Trompe l'oeil in Netherlandish book painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries / co-author, Virginia Roehrig Kaufmann -- The perspective of shadows : the history of the theory of shadow projection -- The nature of imitation : Hoefnagel on Dürer -- Metamorphoses of nature : Arcimboldo's imperial allegories -- Arcimboldo and Propertius : a classical source for Rudolf II as Vertumnus -- Astronomy, technology, humanism, and art at the entry of Rudolf II into Vienna, 1577 : the role of Paulus Fabritius -- "Ancients and moderns" in Prague : Arcimboldo's drawings for silk manufacture -- From mastery of the world to mastery of nature : the Kunstkammer, politics, and science.