Visual and Material Culture of Microscopy in Seventeenth-Century Italy
Workshop
- Participation on site previous registration
- Beginn: 22.06.2022
- Ende: 24.06.2022

This international workshop takes as a starting point the drawings and
printed images that were created by seventeenth-century microscopists and their
artists. In a conversation between experts on seventeenth-century lenses (in
microscopes and telescopes), early modern scientific instruments, epistemic
images before and after the introduction of the microscope, the Italian
microscopic networks, and drawing as an observational art, this workshop aims
at understanding better the visual strategies of depicting the previously
unseen and unknown. How did one communicate something to scientific colleagues
and a wider audience that has never been seen before? How did the first Italian
microscopists visualize their observations and what kind of visual traditions
did they choose to use? How did these earliest representations influence later
visual depictions of microscopic observations? Did the early microscope dictate
a specific observation regime, and how did that affect microscope and visualization
practice? And how was it that Italy with its famous instrument makers,
scientific practitioners, and visual artists stood at the start and center of
an European-wide network of microscopic research throughout the seventeenth
century?
PROGRAM
Wednesday 22 June
14:00-14:45: Welcome by Tiemen Cocquyt
(Rijksmuseum Boerhaave) and Sietske
Fransen (BHMPI)
14:45-15:30: Luca Tonetti (Università di Bologna): Insect anatomy unveiled: A first look at
Marcello Malpighi's unpublished notes
coffee break
16:00-18:00: Marvin Bolt (Technische Universität
Berlin/Corning Museum of Glass) and Michael
Korey (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden): Brotherly Love: Telescopes
and Microscopes
Thursday 23 June
Thursday an
excursion to Florence takes place with side visits and a talk by Cammy Brothers (Northeastern
University, Boston): Observing
Michelangelo at Casa Buonarroti. For invited guests only.
Friday 24 June
11:30-12:15: Florike Egmond (Rome): Gessner and Cesi: comparing their visual studies of plants without and
with the microscope (1550-60s and 1620s)
12:15-13:00:
Pamela Mackenzie (KHI Florenz, A4Lab Berlin): Eggs, Seeds and Apricots: Microscopic Evidence in Seventeenth Century
Generation Debates
14:00-14:45: Francesco Barreca (Università Statale
di Milano): Instruments, Experimentation, and Narrative Building in the Saggi
di Naturali Esperienze: a preliminary quantitative analysis
14:45-15:30: Christoph Lüthy (Radboud Universiteit,
Nijmegen): Title tbc
Coffee Break
16:00-16:45: Wim van Egmond (microphotographer): Portraying Microbes
16:45-17:30: Final Remarks (Tiemen Cocquyt & Sietske Fransen)
For participation register via email: boehm@biblhertz.it
Organized
by Sietske Fransen (BHMPI) and Tiemen Cocquyt (Rijkmuseum Boerhaave)
This workshop
is organized by the Max Planck Research Group Visualizing Science in Media
Revolutions in collaboration with Rijksmuseum Boerhaave as part of the
NWO-funded project Visualizing the Unknown.