Browse results
Contributors are Dimiter Angelov, Péter Bara, Pieter Beullens, Alessandra Bucossi, Luigi d’Amelia, Paola Degni, Michael Dunne, Elisabeth Fisher, Brad Hostetler, Estelle Ingrand-Varenne, Marc Lauxtermann, Tamás Mészáros, James Morton, Theresa Shawcross, and Anna Maria Urso.
Contributors are Dimiter Angelov, Péter Bara, Pieter Beullens, Alessandra Bucossi, Luigi d’Amelia, Paola Degni, Michael Dunne, Elisabeth Fisher, Brad Hostetler, Estelle Ingrand-Varenne, Marc Lauxtermann, Tamás Mészáros, James Morton, Theresa Shawcross, and Anna Maria Urso.
With its focus on the eschatological imagination at a time of transformation in cosmology, this volume opens up new ways of studying early-modern religious ideas, representations, and practices. The individual chapters explore a wealth of – at times little-known – visual and textual sources. Together they highlight how closely concepts and imaginaries of the hereafter were intertwined with the realities of the here and now.
Contributors: Matteo Al Kalak, Monica Azzolini, Wietse de Boer, Christine Göttler, Luke Holloway, Martha McGill, Walter S. Melion, Mia M. Mochizuki, Laurent Paya, Raphaèle Preisinger, Aviva Rothman, Minou Schraven, Anna-Claire Stinebring, Jane Tylus, and Antoinina Bevan Zlatar.
With its focus on the eschatological imagination at a time of transformation in cosmology, this volume opens up new ways of studying early-modern religious ideas, representations, and practices. The individual chapters explore a wealth of – at times little-known – visual and textual sources. Together they highlight how closely concepts and imaginaries of the hereafter were intertwined with the realities of the here and now.
Contributors: Matteo Al Kalak, Monica Azzolini, Wietse de Boer, Christine Göttler, Luke Holloway, Martha McGill, Walter S. Melion, Mia M. Mochizuki, Laurent Paya, Raphaèle Preisinger, Aviva Rothman, Minou Schraven, Anna-Claire Stinebring, Jane Tylus, and Antoinina Bevan Zlatar.
Contributors are Harald Bruckner, Kay Etheridge, Beth Fowkes Tobin, Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel, Karin Leonhard, V.E. Mandrij, Kimberly Schenck, Stacey Sell, Giulia Simonini, and Friedrich Steinle.
Contributors are Harald Bruckner, Kay Etheridge, Beth Fowkes Tobin, Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel, Karin Leonhard, V.E. Mandrij, Kimberly Schenck, Stacey Sell, Giulia Simonini, and Friedrich Steinle.
Contributors: Cristina Brito, Tobias Bulang, João Paulo S. Cabral, Florike Egmond, Dorothee Fischer, Holger Funk, Dirk Geirnaert, Philippe Glardon, Justin R. Hanisch, Bernardo Jerosch Herold, Rob Lenders, Alan Moss, Doreen Mueller, Johannes Müller, Martien J.P. van Oijen, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Anne M. Overduin-de Vries, Theodore W. Pietsch, Cynthia Pyle, Marlise Rijks, Paul J. Smith, Ronny Spaans, Robbert Striekwold, Melinda Susanto, Didi van Trijp, Sabina Tsapaeva, and Ching-Ling Wang.
Contributors: Cristina Brito, Tobias Bulang, João Paulo S. Cabral, Florike Egmond, Dorothee Fischer, Holger Funk, Dirk Geirnaert, Philippe Glardon, Justin R. Hanisch, Bernardo Jerosch Herold, Rob Lenders, Alan Moss, Doreen Mueller, Johannes Müller, Martien J.P. van Oijen, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Anne M. Overduin-de Vries, Theodore W. Pietsch, Cynthia Pyle, Marlise Rijks, Paul J. Smith, Ronny Spaans, Robbert Striekwold, Melinda Susanto, Didi van Trijp, Sabina Tsapaeva, and Ching-Ling Wang.
Summary
This chapter investigates fish out of water; more specifically, pufferfish specimens found in museum collections and represented in different media. It illuminates the complex processes behind preserving and depicting pufferfish as well as how and which knowledge about this species circulated in the context of 18th-century German collections. To gain scientific knowledge, fish bodies were preserved as wet and dry specimens, and/or translated into prints and written descriptions. These various strategies of representation are especially interesting to investigate when they appear within collections without direct access to the ocean. Tracing one specific pufferfish species, then called Tetrodon hispidus, two exemplary Central European natural collections are examined under an art historical lens. By comparing wet and dry specimens from the ichthyological collections of the Leipzig based Linck family as well as Marcus Elieser Bloch (Berlin), I show that what characterized “the” Tetrodon hispidus differed significantly. Through the additional examination of written and pictorial sources, mainly Bloch’s Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Fische, it becomes apparent how the various ways of representation interdepend. Yet, despite the challenges of conserving the animals’ bodies, the specimens’ differences, and the living species’ characteristics unknown to the collectors, one can, surprisingly, trace a coherent iconography of the fish. Thus, shedding light on the production of ichthyological knowledge, this chapterpaper demonstrates the Enlightenment period’s focus on completeness, classification and generalisability as well as the unique role of fish specimens within it.
Summary
The Swiss naturalist and physician Leonhardt Thurneysser zum Thurn (1531–1596) travelled to Lisbon in 1555/56. During his sojourn there, as a guest of the Portuguese Royal chronicler, diplomat and humanist Damião de Góis (1502–1574), he described Portugal’s nature. The little-known manuscript of more than 300 pages contains many descriptions of plants, including herbs and trees. Thirty-two folios deal however with descriptions of fishes and other aquatic and marine animals (mammals, crustaceans and molluscs), which he probably observed at the fish market or in nature. An important part of the species is mentioned by their Portuguese names most probably collected from the fishermen and traders the author interviewed. In the present chapter these names are presented together with the respective modern scientific (binomial) and Portuguese common names, as far as it was possible to identify the animals mentioned by the author, at species level, with reasonable certainty. To our knowledge, this is the first inventory of the aquatic and marine fauna of mainland Portugal.
Summary
This chapter aims to contribute to the analysis of a particular phenomenon in the history of science, that is the emergence of a new view of nature, as manifested by the formation of a specific academic community and the publication of numerous treatises, between 1530 and 1565. It does not so much intend to praise the energy and foresight of those whom a history of event-driven sciences calls precursors, as to assess the evolution and conditions of this movement. Focusing on ichthyology, it presents a brief analysis of five stages, beginning with the first re-publications of ancient sources, in particular Aristotle and Pliny. It continues with comparisons between the species described and the observations of 16th-century naturalists. Finally, it turns to the treatises themselves, whose prefaces already document the awareness of a new approach and methodology. It thus aims to further a better grasp of the often misunderstood movement of Renaissance natural history with its characteristic and permanent attempts to reconcile ancient texts with a sensory appropriation of nature, and whose influence extended until the middle of the 18th century.
Summary
The origins of the European study of nature can be traced back to Greek and Roman antiquity, but illustration for science first flourished during the Renaissance, and was seen by contemporary scholars as a ‘combination of art and science’. From the 17th-century natural illustrations of fish emerged in China, produced by individual scholars and anonymous workshops painters in Canton. This chapter is a survey of painted natural illustrations of fish in China from the 17th to the 19th century and examines their development in different contexts. This overview of the depiction of fish and other marine creatures in Chinese art offers a view on the varied way in which these paintings came about and the purposes for which they were made. Ranging from an attempt at scientific accuracy, to societal commentaries and entertainment purposes, the illustrations and descriptions of the various species highlight that science and art at times work in parallel but often also may proceed in different degree. Unlike its development in Europe, this survey of the development of natural illustration of fish in China, however, shows a different path.
Summary
Many of the major works of 18th- and 19th-century European ichthyology depended on “second hand” information that could not directly be verified. Since their authors had few opportunities to travel outside Europe, they critically depended on specimens and accompanying information from contacts abroad. This chapter examines the strategies of gathering, organizing and verifying zoological information in Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Natural History of German and Foreign Fishes (1782–1795) which presented one of the first accounts of “all” known fish species according to the Linnean system. Bloch’s case illustrates how 18th-century naturalists crucially depended on textual-critical skills to extract facts from often narrative and anecdotal source material.