“Which Cannot Be Sufficiently Described by My Pen.” The Codification of Knowledge in Theater Engineering, 1480–1680

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to theater engineering and related modes of knowledge production and transfer in early modern Europe. It focuses on two case studies: (1) Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and the rise of theater engineering as a lucrative field of activity for “artist-engineers” in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, and (2) Giulio Parigi’s (1571–1635) “school of theater engineering,” the first of its kind, in early seventeenth-century Florence and the subsequent spread of engineering knowledge among European court artists. The paper traces how theater engineers started to transfer and codify their knowledge beyond the realm of publication, how specific schools of “theater engineering” emerged, and how the first manuals and series of machine drawings were published. In parallel, it examines the changing function of theater machines in the period under investigation, from representing religious motives to representing natural phenomena. With this shift, theater engineering gained new epistemic values. It was linked to the emerging experimental philosophy not only by a shared mechanical knowledge, but also by the formation of new iconographic programs of nature.