IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB449960270

Projecting Nature: Agostino Scilla’s Seventeenth-Century Fossil Drawings (2018)

Findlen, Paula (Author)

Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Volume: 42
Issue: 2
Pages: 99-132

DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2018.07.004

URI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016093271830053X

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Illustrations Visual representation; visual communication Fossils 17th century Bartoli, Pietro Santi Scilla, Agostino

In 1670 the Sicilian painter Agostino Scilla (1629–1700) devised an entirely new way of depicting fossils when he wrote and illustrated his Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense (1670–1671), which argued that fossils were the remains of once living creatures and not mimetic stones. This essay explores the nature of Scilla’s graphic innovations, comparing his fossils drawings and Pietro Santi Bartoli’s engravings of them to earlier and contemporary images of fossils. Scilla captured the effect of time on nature by infusing his style of drawing with his philosophical understanding of what it means to see and to know. He made his drawing less rich in detail to focus on those which served his purpose. In particular, he made the first use of dotted lines in paleontological illustration to render his images dynamic theoretical interpretations rather than static depictions.

...More

Included in

Article Greg Priest; Silvia De Toffoli; Paula Findlen (2018) Tools of Reason: The Practice of Scientific Diagramming from Antiquity to the Present. Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science (pp. 49-59). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB449960270/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor; Edwin D. Rose; (2018)
Lives and Afterlives of the Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia (1699), The First Illustrated Field Guide to English Fossils (/isis/citation/CBB973730328/)

Article Domenico Laurenza; (2018)
Images and Theories: The Study of Fossils in Leonardo, Scilla and Hooke (/isis/citation/CBB266756152/)

Book Gal, Ofer; Chen-Morris, Raz; (2013)
Science in the Age of Baroque (/isis/citation/CBB001213194/)

Chapter Jorink, Eric; (2011)
Beyond the Lines of Apelles: Johannes Swammerdam, Dutch Scientific Culture and the Representation of Insect Anatomy (/isis/citation/CBB001201617/)

Chapter Higton, Hestor; (2013)
Instruments and Illustration: The Use of Images in Edmund Gunter's De Sectore et Radio (/isis/citation/CBB001213972/)

Book Kockel, Valentin; Sölch, Brigitte; Heise, Martin; Landwehr, Eva-Maria; (2005)
Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) und die europäische gelehrte Welt um 1700 (/isis/citation/CBB000771594/)

Article Domenico Laurenza; (2019)
The study of fossils in Leibniz's Protogaea: towards a reconctruction of the role of technological models in early modern paleontology (/isis/citation/CBB565261905/)

Book Belli, Gabriella; Giacomoni, Paola; Ottani Cavina, Anna; (2003)
Montagna: Arte, scienza, mito da Dürer a Warhol (/isis/citation/CBB000741141/)

Chapter Goldman, Paul; (2013)
The History of Illustration and its Technologies (/isis/citation/CBB001500580/)

Article Ogilvie, Brian W.; (2008)
Nature's Bible: Insects in Seventeenth-Century European Art and Science (/isis/citation/CBB001021790/)

Article Higton, Hester; (2013)
Instruments and Illustration (/isis/citation/CBB001253160/)

Article Etheridge, Kay; (2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian and the Metamorphosis of Natural History (/isis/citation/CBB001210122/)

Chapter Herbst, Klaus-Dieter; (2000)
Traces to the mechanic's workshop: Gottfried Teuber's copper engraving and woodcut illustrations for Erhard Weigel (/isis/citation/CBB000102379/)

Chapter Teuton, Sean; (2010)
“Put Out of Her Course”: Images of the Monstrous in De Bry's Illustrations of Atalanta Fugiens and the America (/isis/citation/CBB001220297/)

Article Sietske Fransen; (2019)
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen (/isis/citation/CBB238881930/)

Article Hume, Julian Pender; (2003)
The Journal of the Flagship Gelderland---Dodo and other Birds on Mauritius 1601 (/isis/citation/CBB000340395/)

Article Cobb, Matthew; (2002)
Malpighi, Swammerdam and the Colourful Silkworm: Replication and Visual Representation in Early Modern Science (/isis/citation/CBB000200183/)

Article Els Stronks; (2019)
Curiosity, Youth, and Knowledge in the Visual and Textual Culture of the Dutch Republic (/isis/citation/CBB089009139/)

Thesis Pick, Cecilia Mary; (2004)
Rhetoric of the Author Presentation: The Case of Maria Sibylla Merian (/isis/citation/CBB001561779/)

Chapter Kockel, Valentin; (2005)
Ichnographia---Orthographia---Scaenographia Abbildungsmodi antiker Architektur am Beispiel des “Columbarium der Liberti der Livia” (/isis/citation/CBB000780087/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}