Alexander Marr’s new book on Mutio Oddi, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy has been published by the University of Chicago Press. The first full account of Oddi’s like and work, it includes a chapter on the Linder Gallery Interior as well as extensive discussion of Oddi’s activities in mathematics, the visual …
New publication on gallery interiors
Just published, a special issue of Intellectual History Review, edited by Alexander Marr, on the topic of seventeenth-century gallery interiors: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g919679010
When art becomes art – Excerpt from A Mysterious Masterpiece
WESCHLER: Taking it one step further, I would also argue that this is the moment when art starts being art as opposed to being science. For all of your claims that the old man and the woman should be read principally iconographically — that they represent this or they represent that and so forth — there are times when a …
An alternative candidate for Disegno?
It is by no means clear whether the figure of Disegno in the Linder gallery is intended to be generic or a specific portrait. Michael John has suggested Kepler as a possible candidate – which is certainly plausible, although I have yet to be convinced of the similarity between known portraits of Kepler and the features of the Linder gallery figure, …
Cornelis Drebbel’s Perpetuum Mobile in the Linder Gallery
The Perpetuum Mobile, a machine which can just be made out in the shadowy right background of the Linder Gallery (no. 43 in the zoomable image), is not the only invention of Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633), nor perhaps even the most significant, but it is certainly the one for which he was best known by his contemporaries, and the one of …
Drawing and Painting? Art and Science?
The foreground of the Linder Gallery is dominated by two figures, a bearded old man and a young woman in classical clothing reclining in his lap. Whereas the male figure appears to be a portrait, the female figure seems to be purely allegorical. The paintbrushes, maulstick and artist’s pallete would suggest that she can be identified as Painting, or perhaps …
Kepler in the Linder Gallery?
Three books can be seen to the right of the celestial globe in the Linder Gallery. From the bottom they are the HARMONICES MUNDI or Harmonies of the World (1619) and the TABULAE RUDOLPHINAE or Rudolphine Tables (1627) by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
From zero to the Linder Gallery in 5 minutes
I recently gave a rapid introduction to the Linder Gallery at Dublin’s first IGNITE event at the Science Gallery. Speakers are limited to exactly 5 minutes, and 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds, quite a challenge! View the presentation here: