Portraying technology in gallery paintings

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the FPU Grant Programme and the Project HUM2007‐63267 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Fundación Esquerdo and the Residencia de Estudiantes of Madrid. Notes 1. Jones and Galison, Picturing Science; Lefèvre, Renn, and Schoepflin, Power of Images. 2. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands; Filipczak, Picturing Art. 3. Hill, ‘Scientific instruments.’ 4. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities; Olmi, L'Inventario; Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo; Lugli, Naturalia et Mirabilia; Evans and Marr, Curiosity and Wonder. 5. Filipczak, Picturing Art. 6. Las Ciencias y las Artes. 93 × 114 cm. Oil on panel. Catalogue no. 1.405. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1297–1301; Díaz Padrón and Royo‐Villanova, David Teniers, 195–201. 7. De Maere and Wabbes, Flemish Painters, vol. 1, 374. 8. In fact, attributions regarding authorship vary according to interpreters. Particularly noteworthy is the similarity with the work entitled The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), attributed to Hieronymus Francken II. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1300–1. 9. From the history of science perspective see, for example, Daston, Renn, and Rheinberger, ‘Visions.’ 10. Alpers, Art of Describing; Stafford, Devices of Wonder; Kusukawa and Maclean, Transmitting Knowledge. 11. Burke, Eyewitnessing. 12. Hill, ‘Scientific Instruments.’ 13. Michel, ‘Mouvement perpetuel’; Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile.’ For a thorough and up‐to‐date account on Drebbel, see Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel.’ 14. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands, Figures 11, 12, 21, 25, 32, 39, 42, 49. 15. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 124–38. 16. Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, no. 652, 655. Rubens, Letters, no. 52, 58 (to Valavez), 60 (to Valavez), 196, 235. 17. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ Figures 1, 2, 3, 4; Marr, ‘Gentille curiosité,’ Figure 8.2. A drawing made by the Bohemian gentleman Heinrich Hiesserle von Chodaw, who attented Drebbel's presentation of the perpetuum mobile to King James I in 1607, is perhaps the one that resembles the painted version most (Drake‐Brockman, Figure 2). 18. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, 143–4. This mechanism for perpetual motion has been regarded as a predecessor of the barometer. Michel, ‘First Barometer.’ 19. Many are compiled in Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 232–42. 20. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 137. 21. An interesting exception could be the painting entitled Allegory of Hearing, by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens (Prado Museum, catalogue no. 1.395). One of the instruments on the wall (the second from the left), at the right‐hand side of the composition, seems to feature the distinctive ring‐shaped glass tube filled with liquid. This could be a model of perpetuum mobile rather different to those conventionally depicted. I was persuaded to look for a perpetuum mobile/clock‐like device in this painting after observing a perpetuum mobile in another Allegory of Hearing (Ertz, Breughel the Younger, 350, Figure 184) mentioned in Michel, ‘First Barometer’, 92, n. 7. Vera Keller has also noted this in her work on Drebbel. See Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel,’ 268. 22. I thank Simon Schaffer for his suggestions on accumulation and technology. On collecting and collections, Elsner and Cardinal, Cultures of Collecting and Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 23. Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 24. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 25. Swan, ‘Ad Vivum.’ 26. Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, Part IV. 27. Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels; Freedberg, ‘Science, Commerce, and Art.’ 28. Cook, ‘Time's Bodies’; Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 29. Rubens, Letters, no. 58, 97. 30. DaCosta Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature. 31. In sharp contrast with the allegories of ignorance represented in two paintings, most notably the one that rests on a chair in the center of the composition. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1298–1300. 32. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 33. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs. 34. Stoichita, Self‐Aware Image.