The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific RevolutionSince the time of Aristotle, the making of knowledge and the making of objects have generally been considered separate enterprises. Yet during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the two became linked through a "new" philosophy known as science. In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela H. Smith demonstrates how much early modern science owed to an unlikely source-artists and artisans. From goldsmiths to locksmiths and from carpenters to painters, artists and artisans were much sought after by the new scientists for their intimate, hands-on knowledge of natural materials and the ability to manipulate them. Drawing on a fascinating array of new evidence from northern Europe including artisans' objects and their writings, Smith shows how artisans saw all knowledge as rooted in matter and nature. With nearly two hundred images, The Body of the Artisan provides astonishingly vivid examples of this Renaissance synergy among art, craft, and science, and recovers a forgotten episode of the Scientific Revolution-an episode that forever altered the way we see the natural world. |
Contents
3 | |
Flanders | 29 |
South German Cities | 57 |
The Dutch Republic | 155 |
Toward a History of Vernacular Science | 237 |
Notes | 243 |
315 | |
List of Illustrations | 347 |
353 | |
Other editions - View all
The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution Pamela H. Smith Limited preview - 2004 |
The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution Pamela H. Smith No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Adriaen Albrecht Altdorfer Albrecht Dürer alchemical alchemists Altdorfer Amsterdam articulated artisanal epistemology artisans artists Bernard Palissy bodily body Brouwer's Cambridge University Press casting Cellini Cennini Chicago claims Culture depiction Dou's drawing Dutch early modern Early Netherlandish Painting epistemology example experience Eyck's FIGURE Flemish Frans van Mieris German Gerrit Dou gold goldsmith guild History human humanists Ibid idem imitation of nature Jan Miense Molenaer Jan van Eyck Johann Rudolf Glauber knowledge of nature Kunst labor Leiden Leonardo material medicine mercury metals mirror Museum natural philosophers naturalistic Netherlandish Nuremberg º º observation oil on panel painting Palissy's panel painters Panofsky Paracelsus Paracelsus's peasants philosophy plate portrait practice practitioners Princeton processes produced quoted Renaissance representation Robert Robert Campin salt scholars Schongauer Science sculptors senses seventeenth century sixteenth century Sluijter Sylvius Sylvius's texts theory things tion trans treatises ture Wenzel Jamnitzer workshop writings