History
Undergraduate and Graduate Seminar
Tu 4:10-6:00PM
This course will investigate the relations between science and art in early modern Europe, bringing together scholarly works by historians of science and art historians as well as original sources from the period. We tend to think today of science and art as polarized cultural domains, but in the early modern period the very definitions of the terms, as well as a range of other factors, created conditions for a much different configuration between the two. Organized chronologically, this course will focus on a range of representative moments in that developing configuration, from ca. 1500 to 1800. Topics include the nature of the spaces where artworks and natural specimens met, the circulation of tools, materials and techniques between the laboratory and the artist workshop, common norms and practices of representation, and shared aspirations to objective knowledge.
No prior knowledge of the subject is required.
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
