Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge examines how celebrated Northern Renaissance artists contributed to the scientific investigations of the 16th century. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue challenge the perception of artists as illustrators in the service of scientists. Artists’ printed images served as both instruments for research and agents in the dissemination of knowledge. The exhibition, displaying prints, books, maps, and such instruments as sundials, globes, astrolabes, and armillary spheres, looks at relationships between their producers and their production, as well as among the objects themselves. The story of 16th-century technology is enhanced by technology of the 21st, with interactive computers in the galleries, an interactive module on the website, and an iPhone/iPad application in iTunes.
Curated by Susan Dackerman, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Division of European and American Art. Organized in collaboration with the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge is on display September 6–December 10, 2011 at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, then travels to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, where it is on display January 17–April 8, 2012.
The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mrs. Arthur K. Solomon, Lionel and Vivian Spiro, Walter and Virgilia Klein, Julian and Hope Edison, Novartis on behalf of Dr. Steven E. Hyman, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Barbara and the late Robert Wheaton, the Goldman Sachs Foundation, and an anonymous donor. Additional support is provided by the Harvard Art Museums’ endowment funds: the Alexander S., Robert L., and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund; Anthony and Celeste Meier Exhibitions Fund; Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Exhibition Fund; and Melvin R. Seiden and Janine Luke Fund for Publications and Exhibitions.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Online Research Tool: Explore digital facsimiles and see how original prints were used in the 16th century: “construct” terrestrial and celestial globes, flip through layers of human anatomy, and learn how to make your own botanical impressions in the Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe Special Collection.
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Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Susan Dackerman, with essays by Susan Dackerman, Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, and Claudia Swan ISBN 978-1-891771-58-3 Available August 2011 442 pages; 9 1/2×12 1/2 in. 297 color illustrations Paper, $60.00 Published by the Harvard Art Museums Distributed by Yale University Press Winner, International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) 2012 Book Award An unusual collaboration among distinguished art historians, historians of science, and their students, this book demonstrates how printmakers of the Northern Renaissance, far from merely illustrating the ideas of others, contributed to scientific investigations of their time. Hans Holbein, for instance, worked with cosmographers and instrument makers on some of the earliest sundial manuals published; Albrecht Dürer produced the first printed maps of the constellations, which astronomers copied for over a century; and Hendrick Goltzius’s depiction of the muscle-bound Hercules served as a study aid for students of anatomy. Accompanying an exhibition organized by the Harvard Art Museums with objects from repositories across Europe and North America, the book offers brilliant reproductions of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings; maps, globe gores, and globes; multilayered anatomical “flap” prints; and paper scientific instruments used for observation and measurement. Among the “do-it-yourself” paper instruments were sundials and astrolabes, and the book incorporates a facsimile of globe gores for the reader to cut out and assemble. Susan Dackerman is Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums; Lorraine Daston is Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; Claudia Swan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History, Northwestern University; Suzanne Karr Schmidt is Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago; Katharine Park is Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Research Tool: Explore digital facsimiles and see how original prints were used in the 16th century: “construct” terrestrial and celestial globes, flip through layers of human anatomy, and learn how to make your own botanical impressions at harvardartmuseums.org/ppk.
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