IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB000933735

The Persistent Image of an Unusual Centaur: A Biography of Aldrovandi's Two-Legged Centaur Woodcut (2009)

Krämer, Fabian (Author)

Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Volume: 24
Pages: 313--340
Publication date: 2009
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Visual representation; visual communication Animals, mythical Scientific illustration Natural history Epistemology 17th century Aldrovandi, Ulisse

This article traces the biography of a particular scientific image in early modern natural history, that of an unusual, two-legged centaur. It begins by examining the preconditions for the emergence of this image in the work of the eminent Bolognese natural historian Ulisse Aldrovandi. I then analyse its various shifts in content and function as it re-emerged in different publications and, finally, the reasons for its eclipse around 1700. An examination of this trajectory yields valuable insights into the way in which Aldrovandi and other naturalists of the late Renaissance dealt with visualisations. It is reminiscent of their practices of excerpting and reusing textually represented bits of knowledge. The fact that authors like Aldrovandi borrowed and reproduced images from earlier printed sources on a variety of subjects - many aimed not only at naturalists - led to their wide circulation and contributed to the endurance of an older visual style. As a result, one notes a certain amount of inconsistency between the then dominant epistemic virtue and the visualisations used during this period: While natural historians heeded natural particulars much more than the usual productions of nature, their depictions of them, much like their descriptions, were often highly generalised. Particular phenomena did not have to be individualised ones.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB000933735

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Reeves, Eileen; (2007)
Mere Projections: Sunspots and the “Camera Obscura”

Book Rix, Martyn; (2013)
The Golden Age of Botanical Art

Article Bleichmar, Daniela; (2008)
Resumen de El imperio visible: la mirada experta y la imagen en las expediciones científicas de la Ilustración

Article Guerrini, Anita; (2006)
The “Virtual Menagerie”: The Histoire des animaux Project

Book Anna Marie Roos; (2019)
Martin Lister and his Remarkable Daughters: The Art of Science in the Seventeenth Century

Book Fairman, Elisabeth R.; Art, Yale Center for British; (2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World

Book Neri, Janice; (2011)
The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500--1700

Chapter Etheridge, Kay; (2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian: The First Ecologist?

Article Allmon, Warren D.; (2007)
The Evolution of Accuracy in Natural History Illustration: Reversal of Printed Illustrations of Snails and Crabs in Pre-Linnaean Works Suggests Indifference to Morphological Detail

Book Attenborough, David; Owens, Susan; Clayton, Martin; Alexandratos, Rea; (2007)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery

Article Acheson, Katherine; (2009)
The Picture of Nature: Seventeenth-Century English Aesop's Fables

Thesis Doherty, Meghan C.; (2010)
Carving Knowledge: Printed Images, Accuracy, and the Early Royal Society of London

Thesis Kiser, April M.; (2011)
Making True and Lively Figures: Early Modern Natural History Images and the Transformations of Nature

Book Axel Fliethmann; Christiane Weller; (2021)
Anatomy of the Medical Image: Knowledge Production and Transfiguration from the Renaissance to Today

Article Fiorentini, Erna; (2011)
Inducing Visibilities: An Attempt at Santiago Ramón y Cajal's Aesthetic Epistemology

Book Eisenbichler, Konrad; (2009)
Renaissance Medievalisms

Article Jessica J. Williams; (2020)
“The Shape of a Four-Footed Animal in General”: Kant on Empirical Schemata and the System of Nature

Book Hans-Jörg Wilke; (2018)
Die Geschichte der Tierillustration in Deutschland 1850–1950

Book Simon Martin; (2022)
Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists

Article Kusukawa, Sachiko; (2011)
Patron's Review: The Role of Images in the Development of Renaissance Natural History