The Eye of the Lynx
Subtitle: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: September 1, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 528
ISBN-13: 9780226261485
Subjects: Animals depicted in art; European history: c 1500 to c 1750; History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800; History of science; Nature in art, still life, landscapes & seascapes; c 1600 to c 1700; Science/Mathematics; Italy; Commercial - Illustration - Science; Europe - Italy; Science / History; General; Accademia nazionale dei Lincei; History; Science
First sentence: This book tells of a forgotten yet exalted episode in the history of science and art.
Description: "Founded by Prince Federico Cesi in 1603, the Linceans took as their task nothing less than the documentation and classification of all of nature in pictorial form. In this first book-length study of the Linceans to appear in English, Freedberg focuses especially on their unprecedented use of drawings based on microscopic observation and other new techniques of visualization.

Where previous thinkers had classified objects based mainly on similarities of external appearance, the Linceans instead turned increasingly to sectioning, dissection, and the observation of internal structures. They applied their new research techniques to an incredible variety of subjects, from the objects in the heavens studied by their most famous member Galileo Galilei - whom they supported at the most critical moments of his career - to the flora and fauna of Mexico, bees, fossils, and the reproduction of plants and fungi.

But by demonstrating the inadequacy of surface structures for ordering the world, the Linceans unwittingly planted the seeds for the demise of their own favorite method - visual description - as a mode of scientific classification.".

"Profusely illustrated and engagingly written, Eye of the Lynx uncovers a crucial episode in the development of visual representation and natural history. And perhaps as important, it offers readers a dazzling array of early modern drawings, from magnificently depicted birds and flowers to frog in amber, monstrously misshapen citrus fruits, and more."--BOOK JACKET.