The body of the artisan: art and experience in the scientific revolution 9780226763996, 9780226764269, 9780226764238

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page vii)
Introduction (page 3)
PART ONE FLANDERS
1 : The Artisanal World (page 31)
PART TWO SOUTH GERMAN CITIES
2 : Artisanal Epistemology (page 59)
3 : The Body of the Artisan (page 95)
4 : Artisanship, Alchemy, and a Vernacular Science of Matter (page 129)
PART THREE THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
5 : The Legacy of Paracelsus: Practitioners and New Philosophers (page 155)
6 : The Institutionalization of the New Philosophy (page 183)
Conclusion: Toward a History of Vernacular Science (page 237)
Notes (page 243)
Bibliography (page 315)
List of Illustrations (page 347)
Index (page 353)

Citation preview

The Body of the Artisan

THE

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO AND LONDON

THE Art and Experience

BODY in the Scientific Revolution

OF THE Pamela H. Smith

ARTISAN

PAMELA H. SMITH is the Edwin F. and Margaret Hahn Professor in the Social Sciences, Department of History, Pomona College. She is the author of The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire and the coeditor of Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2004 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2004 Printed in China Published with the assistance of the Getty Grant Program

I3 12 If 10 09 O8 O7 O06 O05 O04 12345 ISBN: 0-226-76399-4 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Smith, Pamela H., 1957—

The body of the artisan : art and experience in the scientific revolution / Pamela H. Smith.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-76399-4 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Art and science—Europe— History—16th century. 2. Art and science—Europe—History—17th century. _ I. Title. N72.83 S65 2003

509’.4'0903—dc2I1 2003012364 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3

PART ONE FLANDERS

1: The Artisanal World 31 PART TWO SOUTH GERMAN CITIES

2: Artisanal Epistemology $9 3: The Body of the Artisan 95 4 : Artisanship, Alchemy, and a Vernacular Science of Matter 129

PART THREE THE DUTCH REPUBLIC 5 : The Legacy of Paracelsus: Practitioners and New Philosophers 155

6 : The Institutionalization of the New Philosophy 183 Conclusion: Toward a History of Vernacular Science 237

Notes 243 Bibliography 315 List of Illustrations 347 Index 353

ee We a, 6 _ ee y ee _ |. wo ee Ve Aca asees Se & a. ... 2s — a ee ee eS i eect we a | . ee ee = a oe I es a ns ee oe EN a

0 el Ns AREA eei... — ee s ees“oe a er oo Vas 7SR .hLlLw,”UC™~=‘ue ~eA . : 2020,13751400, f. 21r, by permission of

\ yO sy, ,aa4 a| the British Library. Here the qi LEO . . a Llee _———— ae anonymous artisan depicts the

; ) ad. starting on the left with deli-

progression of ripening wheat,

experiments with perspectiva to represent the buildings of Florence on small panels cate green, tightly nestled kerusing painters’ perspective. The aim of art was shifting from evoking an image of the nels and ending on the far right,

; ; ; ; i. where the open, mature kernels

form of the thing depicted to, as Leon Battista Alberti (1404~—1472) put it in about are on the verge of drying (in1435, making a picture that was an “open window” through which the world was seen.* dicated by yellow and white

The d | f ;of‘ath aliin ;thehas vel dhashighlights) and some e development perspective Italian b Renaissance been extensively studhave already fallengrains from the ied, but the almost contemporaneous development of naturalistic depictions of nature stem.

has not inspired nearly the same interest. This naturalistic art-—beginning in northern nn nnn

. . . . 4. . “Convolvulus,” from the Carrara

Italy and spreading to Flanders, aided by close commercial ties—does not show the use FIGURE 1.2.

of mathematical perspective construction (although the use of the vanishing point ap- herbal, 1375-1400, Egerton peared in the north in about 1370), but instead employed a particularizing light and 2020, f. 33r, by permission of

. . . . . . 4 . . the British Library. Like the individual detail unmatched in Italy at this time. the convolvulus, or morning . . hasoo. isnature concerned with Otto Pacht tracedwo the newlory, depictions of back to a tradition of botaneee the

multiple points of observation, and, especially in the portraits, exhibited an interest in yee ears of wheat, the depiction of

, Lo. , , , ; ; to. tob interly illus

plant’s progression from bud to

ical illustration, the ultimate source for which was an eleventh- and twelfth-century flower. The artist’s focus seems

revival of medicine under the influence of Arabic medical and scientific activity in p Be mots Ob paneny eon than on the full botanical inforSalerno. An herbal produced in Padua around 1400, called the Carrara herbal, mation that would have been emerged out of this tradition, but the naturalism of its illustrations (plate 1, figs. 1.1, provided had the artist represented the full plant including 1.2) was without precedent in earlier herbals.’ It is a vernacular Italian translation the roots.

t 34 2 FLANDERS made in the closing years of the fourteenth century of the Liber Serapionis aggregatus in

medicinis simplicibus by the ninth-century Arab author Serapion the Younger (Ibn Sarabi) on medicinal plant simples. The illustrations in this codex all include close observation and some are drawn from pressed specimens (plate 1), practices probably partly associated with the medical faculty at the university in Padua. Yet these illustrations are not strictly descriptive, that is, they do not always adhere to the function of an illustration in a medicinal herbal, as they do not represent complete botanical specimens, often lacking root, stalk, leaf, flower, or fruit."° As Pacht notes, this is significant

because it indicates the dawning of a painterly aesthetic, in that it both begins “to see in plant portrayal an aesthetic problem” and deliberately confuses painted and real space (thus is illusionistic). It is also significant as an expression of empiricism; as Pacht puts it: the illustrator “is an illusionist who prefers the empirical truth of the one-sided view to the lifeless completeness of an abstract image.”"* Pacht goes on to speak of this illustrator’s “courage to turn his back on all patternbooks and to look nature straight in the face.” I would argue that this empiricism comes not so much out of the heroic mix of science and art posited by Pacht, but, rather, out of a new selfconsciousness on the part of the artisan. Caught between patronage and market forces similar to those that operated on fortification builders and gunners,” this artisan ar-

ticulated his methods not in treatises, but in paint.

The Carrara family, rulers of Padua from 1318 to 1405, commissioned what came to be known as the Carrara herbal, and their interests contributed to the selfconsciousness of the artist and the new attitude toward nature evident in it. Besides employing the artist who illustrated the Carrara herbal, they commissioned remarkably naturalistic portraits, and their funerary monuments show evidence of the sculptors having worked from death casts of their faces and hands. Their palace was painted with lifelike animals. Under their patronage, the painter Cennino d’Andrea Cennini penned II libro dellarte, a manual for painters, in which he states that painting is the imitator of nature and describes the technique for exact replication by casting from life for the first time since antiquity.'* Much more will be said about Cennini and casting from life in the following chapters, but it is important to note here that Cennini’s treatise signals both a self-aware artisan concerned with justifying the mechanical arts and a potent interest in nature at the Carrara court. The interest in nature on the part of the Carrara family was undoubtedly related to their own precarious and “unnatural” hold on power. The family had risen through the communal government of the city, from which they had subsequently seized power, with the result that they possessed political legitimacy neither from pope nor emperor. Instead they based their authority

THE ARTISANAL WORLD + 35 + on the language of the jurists at the university in Padua who claimed that government must imitate nature; the same kind of language the commune had employed when it originally separated itself from the local seigneury. Claiming the natural reasonableness of their rule, the Carrara family thus walked an uneasy course between the claims of the commune that they were unnatural tyrants and the assertions of the pope that they stood outside any divinely ordered hierarchy.” They appear to have employed nature (and artisans) to construct a theater of state that would make authoritative their claims to legitimate rule, or, at the very least, they used nature as a way to display their mastery. The naturalism of the Carrara herbal was an artisan’s response to this discourse about nature and also a statement of the importance of his own part in the construction of this theater of state. In this respect, the herbal’s illustrations are analogous to Cennino Cennini’s written treatise on painting. Both come out of the elevation of the artisan and of nature in the theater of state that constituted a central mode of governing at the Carrara court.

As Pacht notes, the fruits of this attention to the details of nature were not reaped in Italy, where only Pisanello made more frequent use of this “discovery of the

non-human world,” but in the north, particularly in the Burgundian Netherlands. Here again, a noble family foreign to the Lowlands attempted to “naturalize” their right to rule. The wealthy and independent Flemish cities, grown rich from their textile production, had always been difficult to control, for the indigenous counts as much , as they would be for the Burgundian dukes. From the marriage on 19 June 1369 of Philip the Bold, brother to the king of France and duke of Burgundy (duke since 1363, ruled the Netherlands 1384-1404), and Margaret of Male (ruled jointly with Philip 1384-1405) that joined Burgundy and the Netherlands, the conflict between the cities and the dukes was nearly constant, as both attempted to pursue their own goals in the Lowlands. Out of the forced integration of foreign nobles and urban burghers resulting from their rule, a great efflorescence in music, panel painting, and elaborate court celebrations emerged, especially under the rule of Philip the Good (d. 1467) from 1419 to 1467. The wealth of rich Netherlandish cities, containing some of the densest pop-

ulation in Europe, and the intensive agriculture of the countryside provided Philip with the means to assert an autonomous position from which he could contend with the emperor and the warring kings of England and France. After he moved his court to

Flanders in 1420, Philip spent much of the first half of his reign consolidating his power within the Lowlands, dealing with conspiracies by the indigenous noble estates and urban rebellions (Ghent from 1432 to 1436 and Bruges in 1436). The force by which he kept his subjects sometimes only tenuously under control was a mix of armed

36 = FLANDERS might and theater of state.'” The duke’s effort to hold rich and powerful local urban dwellers, nobles, and self-assertive artisan guilds under his control while at the same time claiming his right to status within the Holy Roman Empire engaged him in an escalating contest of patronage and cultural production that employed visual display to maintain authority.” The culture of display and “living nobly” that he engendered at his court became a model for all of Europe, especially after 1454, when he had sworn a crusade in Lille with a spectacle of unprecedented proportions, known as the Feast of the Pheasant, and had attended the 1454 Reichstag in Regensburg, during which he vaunted his luxurious lifestyle before the eyes of the higher-ranking but less splendorous (and poorer) German princes.” The gains made by this journey to Regensburg were reaped in 1477 when Philip’s son Charles the Bold (ruled 1467-77) married off his daughter Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian, heir to the Holy Roman Empire. Philip's journey to Regensburg also mobilized a discourse on the relationship of nature and art that reverberated throughout Europe, but especially in the lands under Habsburg rule*® and among the urban patriciate, eager to imitate the consumption of the nobility. From the beginning of the dukes’ reign in the Netherlands, the Burgundians had patronized the highly skilled Flemish artisans and their humble and sometimes earthy subjects. In manuscript illuminations, sculpture, and eventually panel paintings, these artisans often took their subjects from peasant life and from the natural world. This subject matter arose partly from the new religious ideas and practices of the devotio moderna, which emphasized the imitation of Christ in his humility.** Under the dukes of Burgundy, these “low” genre subjects came to constitute a noble aesthetic.” The dukes encouraged the local aesthetic of depicting nature, and they collected natural curiosities and wonders, because nature had a heightened meaning in their realm.” Even the ars nova of Flemish polyphonic music, such as that of Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois, employed nature in its imitation of birdsong.** Through a discourse elaborated in lavish court banquets, “joyous” city entries, tapestries, stainedglass windows, panel paintings, and all manner of rich objects of nature and art, they organized a narrative that articulated the naturalness and rightness of their own rule in the Netherlands. In so doing, they desired to make autochthonous their reign in a homeland that was not their own. The amalgam of court nobility and urban bourgeoisie that shaped this culture of display gave power to the artisans who made possible its operation, and Netherlandish artisans were aware of the power they possessed. A declaration of their selfconsciousness and their power—both in the sense of artisanal virtuosity and social power—can be found in the illusionism of a joke played by the Limburg brothers, Pol, Hermann, and Jehanequin, on Jean de France, duc de Berry, on New Year’s Day in

THE ARTISANAL WORLD + 37 + 1411. The brothers, born into a family of artisans in Nijmegen, had entered the duke’s service in 1404. As a New Year’s gift in 1411, they presented him with a block of wood painted to precisely resemble a book.** This simulacrum of a book not only reaffirmed the social bonds of patronage and homage between the duke and his court painters, but also demonstrated the Limburg brothers’ power of representation, made clear their wit, and alluded to the artisanal virtuosity of their “real” books, the Belles Heures and their great masterpiece, the Trés riches heures (1411-16) produced for the duc de Berry. This last manuscript achieved its fame through its apparently precise depictions of courtly scenes and natural landscapes (plate 2, fig. 1.3). Naturalism of this kind was meant to inspire wonder, and its ability to do so through illusionistic representation had long been an essential part of the valuation of the mechanical arts.”” Such a capacity was especially appreciated and validated by nobles like the duc de Berry and the Burgundian rulers of the Netherlands in this period.

The type of naturalism embodied in the Limburg brothers’ gift to the duke points to their consciousness of their skill. This kind of self-awareness was especially apparent among goldsmiths. The Limburg brothers, famous today for their manuscript illuminations, had begun their careers apprenticed to a Paris goldsmith. Many goldsmiths in this period turned from working metal to other kinds of activities by which they demonstrated their artistic virtuosity in less precious media. From the thirteenth century, an increasing emphasis on the worth of the artistic virtuosity, or skill, of a piece , rather than of its material began to be articulated. For example, in 1241 King Henry ITI commissioned a golden shrine for Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Matthaeus Parisiensis described it: “In qua fabrica, licet materia fuisset preciosissima, tamen secundum illud poeticum: Materiam superabat opus.” [In such a work, however precious the material may be, as the poet (Ovid) says, the work stands higher than the material.]** The valuation of artistic skill would only increase in the late fourteenth century, and many goldsmiths would migrate from metalworking to become architects, sculptors, and, like the Limburg brothers, painters.*? The painted wooden box of the Limburg brothers could not be a clearer or more self-aware assertion of the value of skill over material.*° Naturalism would become the favored mode of expressing artisanal claims to skill, power, and value in the work of the panel painters of Flanders.

Panel Painters in Flanders

In the first third of the fifteenth century, the Flemish painters Robert Campin (ca. 1378-1444), Jan van Eyck (born before 1395-1441), and Rogier van der Weyden (ca.

= 38: FLANDERS —_ - —lr 1399/1400—1464) brought forth a new level of naturalism and ilos GE ly SS | lusionism. Campin, a master painter in Tournai, made a break Ka 2 _. _ with the International Style of his day, apparently drawing upon com SS the lifelike solidity and emotional intensity of fourteenth-century

fs} Leas Nee ie : | hifi, Pomc eas ce~\ __—_—s* Flemish sculpture, as embodied in the work of Claus Sluter (ca.

lof EEE LEHI TAO a 6). and he realism of particularity and specifici

jf , Se My Ee =ss«1350-140 ), and upon the realism of particularity and specificity

fs} LO, ee) sin early manuscript illumination.” Jan van Eyck’s naturalism was 18 fees Bs | ee long regarded as the result of an invention of the process of mix) Wass ity] | Pil ing seed and nut oils with pigments to produce oil paints (in con| _ trast to the temperas produced by mixing egg whites with pig-

7 ae el chi

- ments), and, more recently, of a new method of applying oil

nr cree a = paints and varnishes to create luminous colors. But new scholar-

, we gk BE erg Le ; es | ship suggests that instead of any technical innovation, van Eyck’s

a et ee ee fae stunning works of art are the result of his “acute power of obserie glee Bo aa! ioe Rk ail ag | ———s- vation of the subtle nuances and interplay of light, shade and

RON ee eee extant wide spectrum of paint qualities, offered by the infinitely | ments.”?* Van Eyck was employed from 1422 to 1424 at the court a of John of Bavaria, count of Holland, in The Hague, and then in

eg * | -:1425 he was made court painter and became a trusted varlet de da) sayy i! . chambre to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, at his court in

“8 . Lille. When Philip moved to Bruges in 1430, van Eyck began to paint for the city burghers there. Rogier van der Weyden moved

| to Brussels in the mid-1430s, where he had been appointed

Paes | official painter to the city. His work for the city included secular ae , * ee BS _—_and sacred paintings and, unlike van Eyck, he appears to have had ST Ee EO TTT ne eT a large workshop with numerous assistants and pupils. His paintFIGURE 1.3, Limburg brothers, “October, from Trés riches BS and their copies were sent all over Europe. Campin, van heures, ca. 1411-16, pigment on paper, 28 x 19 cm, Ms. 65, f. 1ov, Eyck, and van der Weyden all produced for both the nobility and

Musee Condé, Chantilly. Copyright Giraudon/Art Resource, . woe

NY. In the depiction of October, this illumination from the duc burghers of the Flemish cities.

de Berry’s Trés riches heures features the Louvre, prior to its six- These artists used naturalism to assert their self-consciousteenth-century reconstruction, as seen from the Hotel de Nesle. Hage and skill, but they also began to make new claims about their

In the distance, courtiers gather in front of the castle wall, a

scarecrow dressed as an archer in the middle ground watches knowledge of nature and their power to represent that knowlover the fields, and tilling and sowing go on in the foreground. edge. Their mode of representing nature did not employ the perThe ambition to portray a specific moment and a distinct place

inhabited by individuals makes these illuminations distinctive. spective construction of the Italian artists, but rather emphasized

THE ARTISANAL WORLD + 39 # illusionism, as had the Limburg brothers, such as in van Eyck’s Portrait of Man with a Ring

(fig. 1.4). The sitter convincingly proffers the ring out over the frame of the picture as he would over the lintel of a window. These artists also strove to capture individual particularity and temporal specificity in their portraits. They paid special attention to

the surface appearance of the things of nature and of the human face. Robert Campin’s portrait of Robert de Masmines (fig. 1.5) depicts the stubble on his cheek, pointing to a specific moment at which the portrait was produced. Van Eyck’s preparatory sketch of Niccolo Albergati records, and his painted portrait reproduces, the bluish halo around one of his sitter’s eyes, a common symptom of old age (fig. 1.6).” Van Eyck’s portrait of Canon Joris van der Paele (fig. 1.7) epitomizes the attempt to represent a particular and specific individual at an identifiable moment in his life. These paintings seem to capture a real moment, one that was experienced by the sitter and was observed and then rendered by the painter. By means of such stratagems, these painters appear to be making several novel claims in their works. These artisans came out of a milieu in which panel painters were only one among a group of artisans belonging to the Guild of St. Luke, which included illuminators, leather gilders, jewelers, tapestry weavers, goldsmiths, sculptors, saddle makers, and

often physicians and apothecaries. In keeping with this, Jan van Eyck’s panel painting . was just one of his media. He also illuminated books of hours (fig. 1.8), produced coats of arms and organized festival decorations for the Burgundian nobility, and even gilded the statues on the Bruges town hall. Van Eyck’s versatile activity was typical for the type of artisan in the Guild of St. Luke, although he was himself not registered in the guild in Bruges. Campin was a master in the Guild of St. Luke in Tournai, and while he made reference to sculptural innovations in his work, he aimed to display the power of panel painting to produce lifelike simulacra (fig. 1.5). Panel painting, and particularly portraits, became exceedingly popular first among the merchants and then the nobility of the Lowlands, and as these painters came to recognize their own economic power and success, they declared themselves to be unique among the various trades of their guild. Panel painting became their way of demarcating themselves off from their fellow artisans. Through this sought-after medium of panel painting, Campin, van Eyck, and van der Weyden claimed they were artisans of a higher order than their diverse fellows with whom they shared a culture and a guild.** They did not denigrate their origins as artisans, however, as they might have, but instead used their paintings to explicate the growing cultural value and power of panel painting in the worlds of the courts and the towns. These artisans displayed a heightened self-consciousness of themselves as panel

painters, emphasizing the medium in which they worked. They began portraying

cg 8 —e Sg Te ae wy ee en eee oo

ee oeoa . oe) ee i oo 4 OR ae errr ts«C«SCSdizsCC : UE cae ANTS «gilts : oe

ol ‘ ae a a a ieee area oe a See ee eRe eer ere eae

. le é _ o ar ee a Me § i 2 ae ay . oe . ae a re

aniet j J

FIGURE 1.4 (top left). FIGURE 1.5 (middle). FIGURE 1.7 (bottom right). . ae

Jan van Eyck, Portrait ofa Man Robert Campin, Portrait of a Jan van Eyck, detail from “ee fo

with a Ring, ca. 1429, oil on Stout Man (Robert de Masmines?), Virgin and Child with Canon Joris | a

panel (with restorations), ca. 142530, oil on panel, van der Paele, ca. 1434—36, oil eo . " 22.5 X 16.6 cm (original mea- 35.4 X 23.7 cm, Museo on panel, Stedelijke Musea — : surements 19.1 X 13.2 cm), Thyssen-Bornemisza, Brugge, Groeningemuseum. on ee Muzeul National de Arta al Madrid. Campin’s portrait In this detail from an altar- Eg ee Rom§aniei. In one of Jan van of Robert de Masmines, a piece (plate 3), van Eyck por- |. . Eyck’s earliest illusory mas- military commander of the trayed Canon Joris van der oe ~ terpieces, the sitter seems to duke of Burgundy, is very Paele looking up from his oe ;

. wr . 9 . . . % Seat ae a ee : . A Ba ae te

inhabit both the worlds in- lifelike, depicting wrinkles, prayer book in the collegiate ii Bo OP .

side and outside his portrait. scars, and a faint hint of stub- Church of St. Donatian in — 2 dbx His left hand sits on the real- _ ble ringing his lower face. Bruges, where van der Paele Cy _ Pra istically rendered frame of Robert de Masmines’s hair was canon. Van der Paele has >. i Lo Sat the painting, while he prof- and the fur collar on his cloak —_ interrupted his reading, look- ty 2 7 ee an

; ; . . ie i . . ae ie

fers his ring over the thresh- have been painted with par- ing up to behold a vision of ,hLLhrrrrr—“‘“‘*‘C“R‘(C(‘RC;S

old to the beholder. This ticular attention. the Virgin Mary as his inter- . pe, zip ge _

kind of illusionism draws the cessor Saint George com- . oe (oe fare, on

painting's viewer into the mends him to the Virgin. a “ ee ee og space of the painting. Van FIGURE 1.6 (top right). Van Eyck contrasted the ide- gt " “Ge | Ye f

Eyck’s realism in depicting Jan van Eyck, Cardinal Niccolo alized faces of the Virgin and i ced a - a ll p

the sitter’s eyes, lined face, Albergati, preparatory drawing, __ the saints (Saint Donatian is

left ear, and stubble on the 1431?, silverpoint, 8-3/8 x 7- pictured on the other side of chin gives the impression of 1/8 in., Gemaldegalerie Alte the painting) to the canon’s capturing a distinct moment Meister, Staatliche Kunst- wrinkles, white hair, and in a specific individual’s life. sammlungen Dresden. Nic- fleshy jowls. In this painting, cold Albergati was made car- van Eyck portrayed a distincdinal of Bologna in 1426; this _ tive individual at a specific

preparatory sketch for a still- moment in a real location. extant portrait (plate 15) was presumably finished sometime following his appointment. Van Eyck focused his energy on capturing an accurate representation of Cardinal Albergati’s face. The wrinkled and roughened skin is meticulously depicted, and the colors for the final painting are indicated in van Eyck’s handwriting on the drawing.

THE ARTISANAL WORLD + 41 + themselves in their own paintings with great frequencyand gy ae ye in a variety of ways. For example, they often indicated them- "> HR a ap RE el selves with a signature, as when Jan van Eyck painted a vera 44 Wrasse sppumestattttemetieieditin ee

icon image of the face of Christ. This iconic image was called # | NW Way ENN V/A La

an archeiropoietos, an image not made by human hands, and a We ; | an! we was represented as the unmediated face of Christ. But in this Bel B a 4 Mia ||| | irs

image, traditionally unsigned as if not made by human hand- q a ne Tae a | work, van Eyck called attention to himself as maker by sign- an, eee a ie yt xX. ; ing and dating it, “Johes de eyck me fecit et apleviit anno : | a a ae a a 1 She 1438, 31 January,” even including his motto “als ikh kan. ot ae ‘ a os a i ae

, , , ; , mes ) ia )

Oe MR ele ae wer s

Here he not only made clear that this image was the work of m: 3 ' sm) Lf , * aL ff ieee

a specific painter at a precise moment, but also calledespecial . , @ RRNSS -

attention to himself by doing so in an iconallegedlynot cre 3: ated by human hands.” These artisans also depicted their eae a famdieremos. wwe PE

hidden j a reflect; f. 36 th ? Ve quem conanitonads bnanesing A"

own presence as hidden images in reflective surfaces,*® the ~ Re ere tucacas.fs,cenesypmpa’ |}

. . . . . . aap i A . a. SS “ee * p< 3 e ve = :

most spectacular being van Eyck’s presence as painter hold- « FRETS vein fon wabueteurncmumninde

ing his brush and reflected in the polished shield of Saint ef , as ao WE ;° ee George in his painting of the Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van ;Ce eS pany’ ag es ay\ =eee fae : =.1foe sWa. eee Pye eer me iePot ae E : yieeee ees a SY dl ey a oS qaéoe EES ee A ee. _ a. sae OS | :Vier SERS eeiss Sa "y tz ans ay Lo SS YOO yPee es soe oo ee eee eh “Gea d he S ee nae ; ce a aa i AG eee i ‘ f ea set Sam a Feats tens pe i Recsatnt ta ar Wa " , : oe ene _ & aS eo o a Ek. p . 3 ES a of te S sage a /\ Vy _ WUE { : ee oy ONG Poe 4 ie ; om ‘ etic) : br” ae De} hi mo ae Z ¥ A ee a a Wi natin Bee ae eA ; es Reaves hay as ‘ff ¢ Soames ere ns Ae meal, ns Ae ams: a ae ae ' ; os eee oS ee : ae Ee ee oe eat i he 4 : i — a Se . ig ..* ae ree oe : ; a ent : ot ea 1" iVie reg aak)ste iaScala aa. Ni 4A ae : es ra :ae _ ees .ceoo fey VE AE atrya3iefii. oo Vana os —S a; So Cae ae ooe %A ee‘¢ .aU. vead Sah ND ADA fees! COSA SNR Ex eG A NaS ae -Bt. Ro ees flafaces ;4 mea 4Py:]Haare ne Pe 4aARAN ae .aPees iie‘2aaD: -By |aeim aa A Lo ¥eeabe3: ee eee 4! tty 0oeaa cca cae 3 ataee ie eeMN = ate oo ae og 8 eatee og =. co eo fe:a oldsmith 1432, : top left). IUVENIY B)O1

:;: =Saint -Pia.-OlHowe y a , LHLGTUS, 2 cm, c FIGURE 1.10 (tople Petrus Chri: Eligius em1S Na3 + ye 5 s ( 7 Hx =. 1n os : wa) < John the Baptist aas 1449, oil on\, panel, tional Gallery, be aoe leiny ich von ates solitan Mu Be es1s »rha > mea f:! eiae ;I,ster of Arts | | e N etrot yrtrait pe : ss o¢ x , 1 ¥ 2 “ 7 " “aL LO BE left panel, 1438, oil on f Art, Robert Lehma “léal souvenir,” or faithful < ok ee ena Se ee an ao“ ‘aithful and :a: lett p Co oe Werl, lett 5 : SEL _ ) ‘ ace of the NAS a > on, / et : panel, IO | Id au The sitter is ae + sane ' 5 > SO!d: VES ; aeeeeMadrid. :z° right oaG38 od by the g:subject :-epicted. iH 2 a iPrado, Copyrig Commissioned by ea! depict illusion ¢ Pye A “ : : So S1On:ae coe Se SANA ALT Bes smiths ginscribed :swindc pictt :SR hoe tHeinrich 2 ‘erl.a ices th icts a goldsmi ;1s :‘ywsill c=| }(i. a. aoat >aBaptist introdt depicts ac gC:es istic ee PA scala/, >inting the °a wun ie smith in ‘;stone ‘sill on which ) cr tHe 1z ee 2! 4 ting STic Po eh John Pe . saint Eligius, the H carne ce Pee is shop POSSIDI\ ‘an Eyck has ee hl inrich von Werl, : ssibly Saint E 5 =yck has inscribe ik x AcfNasec 7 =eand : oft. > : Vise : dono €AAA : his s oe F . ths) Ve : Z ‘ letion K Follower of Robert Campi a Pike Shop, Possibly Saint Lug panel 33.2 X 18.9 c1

> audick aid tlie Bean: anel, 98.1 x 85.2 sallerv. London. Th

: Le ey - Y, la Art Resource, NY. Saint ith’s guild of Bruges, this ictured in front of an illu

§5 oe t§eeBs reflects Oo: F é. ;Ss aae & pati On Séhasi cy* . :[c£|exac oa a BO! Nice he ee ~oet Ve oo cr MF) Meas em? Lee oe cay a Bs Foye \ A tts 5 FO a sata SE, F ze \ oe \ Ae f ae : Ce eas a = : : Ae ae ne os

iw pMoe Be, NT Mts oes io AE, bares MN Wan Sr eA Ba eee Bee ern cre \ aialaaaaa~ i£Pa aeaeie: - ee a Boe fee ete Lsee Cepaige syne . Ba ee eg a 3 a Bae, Ate f\ ae a Bites ern oe ° =), PSR ce Mee tee yar ate sO CO aA.

TaD f Ci tea Deoe A aaTe MN ee Set, See eSeSS ge gee: So a4 BaAWeen aey Se Coe aeWw ioeBe Oe CRee oace eeeae Eaten Marais ‘ ‘ i i a i ‘ ce ‘ ‘i aii at fi ms * :. at :at. 5AN oo %i aet ae ‘“‘:3;. :: ‘a‘ .‘ ‘‘ in

:: wot8: 2: \jJwu os Ve Uo ae 1 ae. A a aa 4 ea 4i ‘¢f iat Raees anax‘ Ne " eS

" : i . 5 : a ce Yas : i “ Me : : i ‘ ral ‘ x : x ce nat i nt ‘ , of fiesta eea Byala *ta‘ :et 43Hs aall a :te. a \:at aeaaay f :‘ «wi a Dt ie's}: !te ‘eat : ae : ¥aes »: va iAsienna AN

oe | + oo a. | oS ot fe a ae ‘ a i a ie os we ae SN oe we rae \ t + ‘ ‘if: aane SR hyee ne aes aeeCON ‘:‘t: Ce ee i “ too es “ifh.ra4Aae ae a faa ae “4ae _. f3eee ER ai :ae ce' agamm fea esd re 4oo a Aea: oe

:Ni Lat }~~ ae MAAS ¥ae f Pa ‘ *iaei)x aY *eee ce :ve :ay ue tj%AX fii :self aMy ;/{wae d:VyLe Ca = + : on A ™“ iyet Pa a ihe Se } ee : ee ‘ 7 re es a aa i 4 , i : ‘ x Ne Le ¢ Cee ee aye L; rs ; ti = ne Ane ‘ :

aa want WA A A in i Ae 4

vauannitilntaahiadiat edhe ah i ‘iRea 2) Ra CEO Ue Sie :AA "s¢Pe Seay DR Ne a nines? AN Bk. Manat. Mc oe efwat icn aA nhae oe\ Coe AN Ks erate No nenaaee ee nes Balen et ‘CS ANE a ‘i oeSe ic Ae ' ee .eae See

ee kee dpe ee i SI ee - . oe

ak SAA ee ee ageiSR aBers aM oo UeSe Ree aerele ee yeni eae tae »iebeabeata ce gaWo NinhCot Sth |Pies ores ee ta ‘ SAA VaR ARAN ae EniAe aoa eeBAe (ot ale VAS aie, ee afe a ie Pees aa |SR eA Sigh 2S aaes ANOS Ae ee ene SR ORAS an Brena Naver Hara exe te[a ay eeee Rar a tanceg oee NoBARN aDG OAC ae a Oe Natt ft: eee Say ae aaes ealacanuee oe taea oe ‘a oeBarre eee oe lsear iHe::ANE Oe ea ae wy Poe Ger ee oe ee ee Oe ey as Aa 4 SR ge Fe aeaeee a ae ae SS Ae afe Bahude ae: See e gtoo » . . . h co. h Eyck ,

Thebetween dividetangible b ‘bl and d spiritual reality j learl d look at the side ofinthe 1.7).52 e divide spiritual reality is even more clearly portraye represented the room paintingnot it-

. . . . of the couple are clearly re-

in the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy (painted 1467-80), in which precious objects— self. Two figures and the backs

a jewel box, a perfume bottle, a jeweled rosary, rich fabrics, and a book of hours open ) a face. The flected in the mirror’s to ascene from Christ’s Passion—rest on the stone sill (plate 8). Through the arched two figures looking out of the window we see the scene “observed” by the inner eye of the devotee.* Indeed, Maryof 9 Moras wimusssst ue scene. Jan van Eyck’s inscripBurgundy (1457-1482), heir to Charles the Bold and wife of Maximilian I, appears in tion proclaiming that “Joher mind’s eye to be present bodily at the Crucifixion. One woman in the group at hannes de Eyck was here 1434 indicates that one of them was lower left looks back over her shoulder out across the threshold. Through reading and probably van Eyck himself, Picobservation of the images in the book of hours, the eye of the body enables her to at- tured around the mirror are ten scenes from the Passion of

tain an active experience of the Passion. In another of the illuminations from this Christ.

+ 48 2 FLANDERS - li manuscript, the reader both sits outside the frame and enters bodily into Yo ———— the spiritual drama being enacted in the realm across the frame’s threshold

fo | i/ ae | At first glance, it seems that through the framing of this-worldly and nee fo Z py , otherworldly experience, these artists were trying to depict the ideas of the

A 7 a saree e if / nef ag late medieval mystics wh d iritual knowled

lB gh oi li Fila har ystics who attempted to gain access to spiritual knowledge

eo U a i 4he - Hi a 3 re “by means of a threefold process of visionary contemplation. One began Ar | | | | t | . : : : i ae Hf i ‘ with bodily seeing, mere physical contemplation of a pious image, itself no WT a oe Seeeeeem §=6more than an indicative sign of supernatural reality; one then intensified oh Vue m §=© the contemplation into a form of devout ‘seeing’ without a physical image, 7 ; a | a seeing in the mind’s eye; and finally one attained an imageless devotion, a

| £ S direct apprehension of the divine.”** However, if we consider the care lava — eeeeeeee = ished on the depiction of the natural objects portrayed on the earthly side _ of the vision, we see, as Panofsky does, that these paintings “emphasized

, Ve and glorified the earthly materiality of the picture”* and are more properly : a regarded as part of a shift taking place in attitudes toward the use of imiF | , 7 ages in devotion and, more significantly, toward bodily experience. The I wp 4 a kind of imageless devotion described by Saint Augustine, according to Jefa cies frey Hamburger, had become mostly theoretical by 1400.*° Aspirations to ecw i visionary experience as a means of coming to know God became more

, an common among the laity from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and, as a result, a new use of the senses and corporeal images in

, rr attaining visions emerged. The value of the senses in tasting “the sweetness

- 4 a of spiritual delights through the likeness of bodily things””’ was highB lighted, and the sight of the inner eye came to be assimilated to bodily ex-

/: perience. In the devotional diptych that copied van Eyck’s Madonna in the

, IR A oe Church and in the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy, the value of sensory per= ception is brought to the fore at two levels. First, the importance of the

FIGURE 1.17. senses in attaining visions by means of the images in the book of hours— Jan van Eyck, Madonna in the Church, ca.1425,0ilon that is, the use of the senses to obtain knowledge of the divine—and, sec-

panel, 31 x 14 cm, © 2003 Bildarchiv Preufischer . Lo. . . . . Kulturbesitz, Berlin (Gemaldegalerie). This tiny ond, in the similarity of the visionary experience to sensory experience. For panel exhibits depth and exquisite detail in itsvii example, in the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy, the donor’s vision is de-

sion of the Virgin towering in the church picted as a kind of active bodily apprehension of the divine mediated through the senses, indicated both by the material objects in the liminal space between the viewer and her divine vision and by the very fact of the laborious care lavished on the physical object of devotion, the book of

THE ARTISANAL WORLD + 49 + = ra “ hy mn “ a

cM ette * eAagee ee ? ia me eer2eee

Pe \ he. we.i :‘

, :r“a ORS Q , n= Tg was Haat

: aa ET

: ie LY > ll ee ; ig! tic ieee pet be 4. |alll a i ed Ls i | 3 & ya mS es :a“,-ee, wi ~~. |... ee ose Wd eeee | _—————— lri“( (CsCOisCiCOr NC

hours itself. Second, the painter appeared to regard as self-evident his ability to repre eT Tarr Te

iI dered f his sj £ide h . hi Madonna in theal Church. Diptych made fu rtob;and of th f “ons | for sent the visionary experience on the far side of the frame as naturalistically as the care- Anonymous copy of Jan van Eyck’s

y rendered objects of art and nature on this side of the frame; the naturalism of his Christian de Hondt, 1499, oil on panel,

is adequate ad d tbetothe visi 383 At both |experience.” ls. th le of At th both Koninklijk Museum voor art is describe the visionary levels, the role of the j Schone Kun-

. . . . . . ; sten Antwerpen. Christian de Hondt

painter is crucial, for he creates the devotional objects that guide the beholder’s path -| ! commissioned this copy of van Eyck’s

to a higher knowledge and he represents the elements of that higher knowledge. In — Madonna in the Church. It shows him kneel-

both, h the h .painter's 5 F . .naturalistic h . al f representation . ing before a vision of the Virgin, thea aeview conveys the potential of sensory experiof his spiritual eye made visible in the

ence for attaining knowledge and argues for the power that lies in seeing and repre- copy of van Eyck’s panel painting,

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watercolor and tempera, with Kunst” was a “deception” or a “prison” (confined and without light), while “art” withwhite highlights, 26.3 x 35.5 cm, out practice could not “grow” and would “remain hidden.” The result of a union of

Museum Boijmans Van Be- « 3 « 53 . i. . .

uningen, Rotterdam. Kunst” and “Brauch” was to be the production of visible and tangible effects, in other

i words, works of art. For Diirer, such works proved the artist’s “Gewalt,” or power.” FIGURE 2.8. In the Underweysung, he struggled to find an adequate language to express abstract

en and brown ink, 24.7 X 42.9 . . . ” ,

Albrecht Diirer, Lobster, 1495, mathematical concepts in German and ended up using “the graphic expressions which ro 20 03 Bildarchiv PreuRis- had been handed down from generation to generation of artisans,” such as Fischblase cher Kulturbesitz, Berlin (fish bladder) and der neue Mondschein (the crescent moon) for the sicklelike figures re-

Kupferstichkabinett). Two of . . . . +: 11: . .

, both found in the Adriati . . .

Darnreeah "sears a ics 4 sulting from the intersection of two circles.” Diirer asked Willibald Pirkheimer and

crab (Eriphia spinifrons) and lob- other learned friends for help in composing the prefaces to his books, but the results

x, Diirer probably how both were not satisfactory to Diirer.** In its techniques and proofs, the Underweysung der Mesfrom life during his first Italian sung drew from Ptolemy, Euclid, Piero della Francesca, various German mathematical

Joumney 1 NADAS IS: tracts, and the traditional practices of builders. Diirer’s stated aim in this work was to “show the inner understanding by external work.” For example, he makes clear that although he knows from Euclid that a point and line have no “size, length, width, or thickness” and in fact are “invisible,” he will represent them and everything he de-

scribes in images in order that the students of building, painting, and the other arts | will “see an image before their eyes and apprehend [begreiffen] it better.”** Through this book, Diirer wished to convey the methods of perspective construction and the idea of demonstrative knowledge in geometry to his fellow German artisans, but he did not hesitate to note that some practices, such as that of constructing nine-, eleven-, and thirteen-sided figures, could not be accomplished geometrically, but could only be

ARTISANAL EPISTEMOLOGY + 73 + undertaken as builders had traditionally carried them out, “mechanice” (by practice) .*° Diirer attempted in this work to articulate artisanal practice in a theoretical manner, but in such a way that could encompass both the particular and the universal. His treatise on human proportions is a similar mix of theoretical mathematics and experience. To find the proportional relationships of the human body, he studied two or three hundred living individuals. The result was not a work of idealized mathematical principles but rather a book of “mathematical rules.” Diirer made use of the compass and a multitude of proportional relationships among the parts of the body, so that any artisan wanting to follow his method would have had to pore over his examples, measuring and dividing furiously. Whether an artisan could actually derive a simplified or quantitative method from Diirer’s book is questionable. The point is, however, that in this work, Diirer attempted to mathematicize his art, thereby lending it greater certainty and scholarly legitimacy, and expressing his ideas in terms scholars

could understand so they, too, could grasp the certainty that he, as an artisan, found in | nature. Erwin Panofsky regards Diirer’s Underweysung as showing “in vitro, as it were, the

transition from a convenient code of instructions to a systematic and formulated body of knowledge.”*” While it is accurate to describe some of the German artisanal treatises Diirer had available to him as abbreviated codelike sets of instructions, they often seem more like a means to jog the memory than directions to be followed, for they are frequently anything but convenient. Diirer’s treatise, in contrast, seems to have a different aim. Interested and aware of his own processes of making, he believed he possessed a kind of knowledge that was as certain as geometry, but difficult to articulate as a coherent body, and it was this knowledge (and this certainty) that he sought to convey in his treatises. This knowledge was gained from nature: But life in nature manifests the truth of these things. Therefore observe it diligently, go by it and do not depart from nature arbitrarily, imagining to find the better by thyself, for thou wouldst be misled. For, verily, “art” [i.e., Kunst, or theoretical knowledge, as opposed

to Brauch, or simple practice] is embedded in nature; he who can extract it has it.**

There is no doubt that Diirer felt intense excitement about the notion of ideal proportions as well as about combining mathematics with his practice, but he was never satisfied with the idea of universal principles abstracted from nature. His own knowledge could not be contained within the model of geometrical demonstration alone. What he struggled to attain in his books was the articulation of the certain knowledge

t 74 + SOUTH GERMAN CITIES he felt he possessed in art and the certainty that he had found in the variety of nature. The difficulty of articulating such particularistic principles derived from all-bearing nature is exemplified in Diirer’s struggles with the principle of beauty in the Four Books on Human Proportion. He could not accept that a single principle of beauty would be drawn from a single individual, nor did he think it possible to find a perfectly beautiful person, nor, again, that such a principle could be established a priori: Some talk about how human beings ought to be... ; but I consider nature as master and human fancy as a fallacy; once for all the Creator has made men as they should be, and I hold that the true shapeliness and beauty is inherent in the mass of all men; to him who can properly extract this I will give more credence than to him who wants to establish a newly thought-up proportion in which human beings have had no share.”°

Similarly, Diirer offered more than a single ideal example of each Roman capital letter in the Underweysung der Messung. In contrast to Italian art theorists, Diirer was not satisfied with the concept of a single perfect form.” The certain knowledge residing in nature—there to be extracted by the artist—could not be divorced from matter itself. For Diirer, art rested on a knowledge of the variety and particularity of matter and nature. Diirer seems to have seen particular potential in the practice of the arts because they were founded upon nature. He wrote that the famous Vitruvius had “searched out” and found many good things, “but that does not mean others that are also good may not be found; especially in the things which cannot be proven that they are made in the best way.” The arts, because they were not capable of the kind of absolute proof possible in geometry, had more creative potential than provable knowledge.” Their certainty and their creative potential derived directly from nature and resulted in inventions and works.

Casting from Life

The Nuremberg master goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585) also combined Kunst and Brauch. Born in Vienna, Jamnitzer learned goldsmithing there under his father, then became both a member of the Nuremberg goldsmiths’ association and citizen of Nuremberg in 1534, six years after Diirer’s death. During his life, Jamnitzer was best known for his extreme naturalism. He achieved an exact imitation of nature by “casting from life” (fig. 2.9). This technique involved capturing a small animal alive,

ARTISANAL EPISTEMOLOGY + 75 +

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iy - ae oo : FIGURE 2.9. FIGURE 2.10. cee : J ee ‘ Wenzel Jamnitzer, Pen Case, Wenzel Jamnitzer, Two ey fo Fe a . a f 1560-70, cast silver, 6 x 22.7 Lizards Cast from Life, ca.

| ce re ag | ; .. . 2 : j s* . xX 10.2. cm, Kunsthistorisches 1540-50, silver, 7 X 4.1 cm, : a) pi Cf + yey , : - » \ aN , Museum, Vienna. This pen Germanisches NationalmuOo iW rg 4 . E - - $i ge 4 small animals and delicate nique of casting from life alOP el SY t=- mae Pe Pe: top of the box is divided into unprecedented detail. gr CF gh eR 48as tenage squares, seeneceenene fy . §§)each Peeladorne et a: with a separateeeeeecnenonesnennennsnnnnnaeae small crea—=l hh lhClUT UNF . tA” 2 . me ture, and the sides are en- FIGURE 2.11 (bottom left). : «aa oo _ r.Crrtrt*—“‘é#té#CRSN ) c.rti‘iOCOS » insects and reptiles. ture Casts of Plants, ca. 1540, sil-

te ry gr££ , ££ ijtlver, 6.§ cm, 5.5 cm, $.8Nationalcm, 4.2 > % | — “ a F cm, Germanisches _. > Co rsCsitiés . | | 19 oo . q \ : museum, Niirnberg. The first specimen on theis left, with its 7 eae LUSrrrr—i : ee featherlike leaves, yarrow;

“41° . . . . . , . the third can be identified as the second is marsh marigold;

killing it by immersing it in vinegar and urine so that it was not deformed by blows, and ivers chamomile: and yers chamomile; and the then posing it in a lifelike manner by attaching it with threads to a clay base.* A thin fourth is scotch heather.

plaster-and-sand solution was painted over the animal, and the whole thing was then fired in a kiln, which hardened the plaster and burned out the organic matter. This formed a mold that was first cleaned out with a warm oil (and probably subsequently refired) and then poured with metal (fig. 2.10).>* Jamnitzer cast many animals, but he achieved particular fame for his ability to cast delicate flowers and grasses (fig. 2.11). Jamnitzer was also known for his book Perspectiva corporum regularium (1568) as well

as for producing instruments. Jamnitzer’s portrait expresses his ambitions and reputation (plate 13). In one hand, he holds his invention for calculating the mixtures of met-

+ 76 ¢ SOUTH GERMAN CITIES als (with the specific weights of the metals inscribed on it), in the other, a pair of compasses. Behind him stand his signature plants, cast from life, and before him on the table is his Neptune figure, both in his design on paper and fully executed in gold.* A favorite goldsmith of four Habsburg emperors, Jamnitzer played on the theme of natural and human artifice (fig. 2.12).°° Playing with the divide between nature and art became a favorite conceit of artisans in the sixteenth century, who claimed by their ars both to imitate and even to rise above the artifice of nature.” Their patrons, especially the Habsburgs, continuing a discourse about the relationship of art and nature that they inherited from the culture of the Burgundian dukes and Maximilian I, commissioned such works with increasing frequency in the sixteenth century. Habsburg Kunstkammern overflowed with these objects, and the free imperial city of Nuremberg was one of the foremost sites of their production (fig. 2.13). Life-casting embodied the polyvalent intersections of art and nature, but to some observers it also proved the superiority of the moderns over the ancients. Giorgio Vasari comments: And what is more, some clays and ashes used for this purpose are actually so fine, that tufts of rue and any other slender herb or flower can be cast in silver and in gold, quite easily and with such success, that they are as beautiful as the natural; from which it is seen

that this art is more excellent now than it was in the time of the ancients.

Jamnitzer was held in high regard by his fellow Nuremberg citizens, and nobles and scholars, smitten with the exact imitation of nature, visited his large and prosperous workshop.” Nuremberg humanist Johann Neudorfer (who provided the inscriptions for Diirer’s Four Apostles) praised Wenzel and his brother Albrecht Jamnitzer: They both work in gold and silver, are masters of proportion and perspective, cut coatsof-arms and seal-dies in silver, stone and iron. They use beautiful colors of glass and they have brought the technique of silver etching to the highest pitch. Their skill in casting little animals, worms, weeds and snails in silver and decorating silver vessels therewith has never been heard of before and they have presented me with a solid silver snail cast with all kinds of flowers and grasses; and the said flowers and grasses are so delicate and thin that they move when one blows on them.°°

The ambitious scope of Jamnitzer’s imitation of nature can be seen in a fountain commissioned in 1556 by Emperor Maximilian II and finally completed twenty-two years later in 1578 in which Jamnitzer attempted to replicate the entire divine, human,

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+ 92 ¢ SOUTH GERMAN CITIES of which painting (granddaughter) was one."* Thus, for Leonardo, painting was a science, a part of nature itself, and the artist/artisan engaged in nature through experience, learning the essence of nature to produce effects."* Because it was the “sole imitator of all the apparent works of nature,” Leonardo viewed painting as “a subtle inventione which with philosophy and subtle speculation considers the natures of all forms.” It gives an unmediated access to nature that words cannot give; painting communicates, “not otherwise than do the things produced by nature.”’” Painting is a part of nature. It can be extracted by the painter/inventor, but, in order to do so, the mind of the inventor must “transmute itself into the very mind of nature.”"** The resemblance of Paracelsus’s ideas to those of Diirer in the 1520s is even more striking. As we have seen, Diirer states that certain knowledge, Paracelsus’s scientia, lay in nature, and that this certainty was expressed by realistic representation: But life in nature manifests the truth of these things. Therefore observe it diligently, go by it and do not depart from nature arbitrarily, imagining to find the better by thyself, for thou wouldst be misled. For, verily, “art” [i.e., Kunst as opposed to Brauch] is embedded in

nature; he who can extract it has it. If thou acquirest it, it will save thee from much error in thy work.’””

This is a crucial passage for understanding Paracelsus’s articulation of an artisanal epistemology in the 1530s. For Diirer, as for Paracelsus, nature, in all its variety and temporality, contained certain knowledge. Nature was primary. The artisan or physician extracted this certain knowledge from nature by imitating it (‘do not depart from it arbitrarily”). This imitation was carried out through the body, the limbs and the senses, in the practice of art. Part of the extraction of true scientia from nature involved reading the signs of things. When one considers Diirer’s attempt to work out a system of human proportions by observing many different people, it is significant that Paracelsus believed that the signs could be recognized through studying the proportions of individual persons.”* For Paracelsus, the aim of the physician/natural philosopher was to make visible those invisible virtues that God had hidden in Creation. For Diirer, art brought out what lay hidden in nature. Both men emphasized that the proof of an artisan’s or physician’s successful extraction of scientia from nature lay in the production of effects.

Diirer believed that the power (Gewalt) of the artist lay in producing effects and that the very uncertainty of the arts (due to their location in the material world of nature) made them more productive than the more certain theoretical sciences. Similarly,

ARTISANAL EPISTEMOLOGY + 93 + Paracelsus writes, “without practice and experience all arts are dead, for through practice and experience comes power [kiinden].”"” He believed that there was no end to invention in the arts because the celestial bodies continually rained down their creative influences.”° According to Paracelsus, the creative influences of the heavens were, in fact, particularly concentrated in Diirer and he was therefore especially powerful. Paracelsus called him an “adoptive son” of the stars in art.’ Michael Baxandall reads Paracelsus for insight into the world of the limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany because Paracelsus “throws a more penetrating light on the characteristic forms of sculpture than anything else available. ** This is a characteristically brilliant insight, but the foregoing discussion allows us to see that the

connection between Paracelsus and artisans goes even deeper than Baxandall suspected. Paracelsus articulated the relationship of artisans like Diirer and Jamnitzer to nature. These artisans believed they possessed a species of knowledge, based on nature and extracted through bodily work, which was as certain as any demonstrative proof. In their texts and their works of art, they aimed to give this experiential, embodied knowledge philosophical form and to convey it to their fellow craftspeople and to the humanists visiting their workshops. Paracelsus, working alongside artisans and understanding their work partly through the writings of his fellow scholars, grasped their effort and gave it voice as part of an overarching philosophical reform, a story to which we shall return in chapters 4 and Ss.

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