Image Making as Knowledge Production: Earth, Heavens, and Body

Each day will start with a presentation by image-makers, to reflect on current visual practices of the context of teaching and learning, and research. The main part of the day will contain historical case studies. And each day will be closed by natural scientists reflecting on the role of image-making as doing science.

This interdisciplinary dialogue between current-day practices and the study of historical practices in art and science have been a driving force behind the research of the Research Group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions. With its broad temporal and thematic scope, the focus on image-making practices as both a highly skilled and highly creative process has become central to understanding how people gained and communicated knowledge.

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Programme

Image Making as Knowledge Production: Earth, Heavens, and Body
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (BHMPI), Rome
25–27 June 2026
Scientific organization: Sietske Fransen, Giulia Simonini, Elisa Spataro

Day 1, 25 June: Earth

9:00 Welcome and Introduction
Sietske Fransen (BHMPI)
Giulia Simonini (BHMPI)
Elisa Spataro (Sapienza Università di Roma)

9:30–10:30 Image-maker presentation with discussion
Maddalena Scimemi (Università Roma Tre) and Carlotta Torricelli (Università Roma Tre), Title tbc

Coffee break

11:00–13:00 Session 1
1. Leendert van der Miesen (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), “Merely out of curiosity”: The Natural History Drawings of Jan Brandes (1743–1808)
2, Giulia Simonini (BHMPI), Drawing Beetles and Butterflies Iridescence in Early Modernity
3. Laura Valterio (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Breeders as Surrogate Mothers: Animal Care and Reproductive Labour in Early Modern Representations of Sericulture

Lunch break

14:00–15:30 Session 2
4. Alexandre Claude (BHMPI / European University Institute), Making Authoritative Images: Francesco Stelluti, the Lincei, and the Discovery of Petrified Wood
5. Gilles Monney (Independent scholar, Bern), Cold Histories in a Melting World: Alpine Glaciers between Knowledge-Making and Vanishing Imaginaries

Coffee break

16:00–17:30 Session 3
6. Luca Tonetti (Università di Padova), Nidus or Uterus? Visualizing Galls and Insect Generation in Malpighi’s Work
7. Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen (Huygens / KNAW, Amsterdam), Title TBC

Coffee break

18:00–19:30 Scientist presentation with discussion
Pierfilippo Cerretti (Sapienza Università di Roma) & Maurizio Mei (Sapienza Università di Roma), Title TBC

Day 2, 26 June: Heavens

9:30–10:30 Image-maker presentation with discussion
Silvia Spezzano (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching bei München), Imaging Molecules in Interstellar Space

Coffee break

11:00–13:00 Session 4
1. Stefan Zieme (CNRS – Observatoire de Paris / PSL), The Diagrams of the First Appendix of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (1201-74) Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī
2. Eric Jorink (Huygens / KNAW, Amsterdam), Christiaan Huygens and the Mystery of Saturn’s Ring: Observation, Visual Thinking, and Peer Review
3. Antoine Gallay (Université de Lausanne), Making the Incommensurable Tangible: Visualizing the Solar System in Christiaan Huygens’s Cosmotheoros (1698)

Lunch break

14:00–15:30 Session 5
4. Odile Lehnen (Durham University / The Royal Society), A Seat at the Table: Collaborative Observation in the Herschel Household
5. Marvin Bolt (Independent Scholar, USA), In Defense of the Inhabited Sun: Visualizing William Herschel’s Strange Idea

Coffee break

16:00–17:30 Session 6
6. Nina Caviezel (BHMPI / Universität Basel), From Dust to Data: Cleaning as a Visualizing Practice in Astronomy 7. Charlotte Bigg (CNRS, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris), Blurry Skies

17:30–18:00 Discussion

18:00–19:00 Dinner in Villino (for participants only)

19:00–20:30 Scientist presentation with discussion
Peter Galison (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), Image Knowledge: Filming Black Holes

Day 3, 27 June: Body

9:30–10:30 Image-maker presentation with discussion
Gemma Anderson-Tempini (Artist, UK), Body-Mapping the Mycobiome

Coffee break

11:00–13:00 Session 7
1. Briana Brightly (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), Drawing the Buddha, Drawing the Body: Image-Making as Method in Tibetan Anatomy
2. Daniel Santiago Sáenz (Columbia University, New York), American Bodies as Exempla in New Spain and New France: Visual Methods, Pedagogical Paradigms
3. Francesca S. Croce (Universität Wien), Staging Anatomy: Image-Making and Imperial Display in the Josephinum, Vienna

Lunch (for participants only)

14:00–16:00 Session 8
4. Fabrizio Bigotti (Center for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance, Pisa / University of Exeter), Harmonious Configurations: Geometrical Reasoning in Renaissance Anatomy and Beyond
5. Noemi Di Tommaso (Università degli Studi di Milano), When the Eye Draws: Autograph Images and Experimental Knowledge in Francesco Redi (1627–1697)
6. Jennifer Marine (Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX / University of Virginia), Guided by Ghostly Hands: Process, Production, and Evidence in Spirit Drawing and Photography

Coffee break

16:30–18:00 Scientist presentation with discussion
Erin Schuman (Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main), Seeing is believing: how images changed our understanding of the inner workings of the neuron

18:00-18:30 Concluding Words
Sietske Fransen

Scientific Organization: Research Group "Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions", Sietske Fransen (Bibliotheca Hertziana), Giulia Simonini (Bibliotheca Hertziana), Elisa Spataro (Sapienza Università di Roma)