Representing Nature, Picturing Machines
The Renaissance Printing Press 1568
Books in the Bodleian, Oxford
Printing Images “The printing of pictures, however, unlike the printing of words from movable types, brought a completely new thing into existence – it made possible for the first time pictorial statements of a kind that could be exactly repeated during the effective life of the printing surface. This exact repetition of pictorial statements has had incalculable effects upon knowledge and thought, upon science and technology of every kind. It is hardly too much to say that since the invention of writing there has been no more important invention than that of the exactly repeatable pictorial statement.” William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication, p. 3
The Power of Print First Printed Image of a Press, 1499
Pliny’s warning “Pictures, however, are very apt to mislead, and more particularly when such a number of tints is required for the imitation of nature with any success; in addition to which, the diversity of copyists from the original paintings, and their comparative degree of skill, add very considerably to the chances of losing the necessary degree of resemblance to the originals.” Pliny the Elder, Natural History IV.25
Techniques of Illustration Woodcuts Etchings Copperplate Engravings
Printing Machines Robert Valturius’s Art of War (1472)
Representing Nature The Garden of Health (1485)
Daffodil and Lily
Diagramming the Heavens Sacrobosco’s Sphere (1485)
Sacrobosco in manuscript, 15th century
Sacrobosco, Venice 1501 edition
Depicting the Body Mondino’s Anatomy (1493 edition)
Leonhart Fuchs History of Plants (1542)
Black and White or Color?
Albrecht Durer’s rhinoceros, 1515
1543: Vesalius and Copernicus
Agostino Ramelli’s Bookwheel, 1588
Johannes Stradanus, Nova Reperta, ca. 1600
Printing
Copperplate engraving
Controlling Print: Tycho and Kepler