Art

Constellation figures remained popular in education, as in these constellation cards which make learning the constellations easy. The set includes 32 cards, each focused upon one or a few constellations.

Coronelli, a Franciscan theologian and astronomer who worked in both Italy and France, was a founder of modern geography and an influential maker of celestial and terrestrial globes.

Consider this geometrical drawing, portrayed with true perspective and a mastery of light and shadow. It comes from a treatise on art and mathematics by Luca Pacioli, yet it was not drawn by Pacioli.

In the Prodromus, Hevelius explained the instruments and methods used to produce the star catalog. Hevelius’ Gdansk observatory, “Stellaburg,” was the best in Europe until the later national observatories of France and Britain.

This beautiful atlas fused artistic beauty and scientific precision.

In contrast to Piccolomini, who omitted constellation figures in favor of scientific accuracy, Bayer superimposed constellation figures upon the star maps without compromising positional accuracy. These figures were artfully drawn by Alexander Mair.

In contrast to the constellation figures in Hyginus and Abu Ma’shar, Piccolomini created a star atlas, measuring the positions of the stars according to an indicated scale (specific to each plate). He designated stars by Roman letters (a, b, c, etc.) in order of apparent brightness.

Kepler’s star map shows the constellations of Ophiuchus (the Serpent Handler), Sagittarius and Scorpius. The Milky Way runs diagonally down from the left, and the “ecliptic,” or annual path of the Sun, runs horizontally through Sagittarius and Scorpius.

The search for comets, charged with astrological meaning, stimulated careful scrutiny and revision of maps of the stars. Lubieniecki collected an anthology of cometary reports, attempting to describe every known comet observed in Europe up to 1665.

For this first edition of Ptolemy’s collected works, Johann Honter drew constellation figures after the manner of Albrecht Dürer. The figures appear in contemporary dress rather than in a classical style.

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

Euclid was the starting point for any further study of optics and perspective. Optics combined geometry, experiment, vision and art. In the presentation of the geometrical solids, this copy retains the original pop-ups.

In this illustration, Chérubin d’Orléans adopted the lunar map of Hevelius. The putti are observing the Moon with telescopes equipped with the “pantograph,” a perspectival tool devised by d’Orléans.

This anthology of the works of Alberti, a humanist scholar, contains the printed edition of his treatise, “On Painting,” a work he originally dedicated to Brunelleschi.

This dialogue between a mother and her daughter offers a delightful introduction to the night sky. It contains 23 engraved plates drawn by Whitwell herself, including four hand-colored folding plates.

The Perspectiva of Peckham (13th century) became the established university textbook on perspective. It was the text Galileo likely used in his early studies of optics. Renaissance artists were well-versed in the classic works on perspective.

Greek writers compiled ancient stories of the constellations, often in poetic form, with memorable instructions for locating bright stars and zodiac constellations. Constellations of the zodiac contain the wandering courses of the planets and the annual path of the Sun.

Manuscript copy by Hajime Terai from original written in 1765 by Ise; illustrations copied by Odani.

Euclid was the starting point for a mathematical approach to physics. This is the 1st printed edition. The beautiful woodcuts are hand-colored in this copy. The text of the first page was printed in both black and red ink. The geometrical diagrams were quite difficult to prepare.

Art and anatomy converging in an illustrated manual: These human figures are more than utilitarian: walking against a real background, posed as if revealing to our eyes the unseen beauty and wonder of human anatomy; they also reflect an increasingly artistic approach to the human body.

Clip art with woodblocks: Estienne obtained a number of woodblocks from an obscure artist. To show anatomical detail, he cut little rectangles out of the art woodblocks and substituted his own diagrammatic drawings.

A globe maker for the French royal family, J. Fortin, prepared this edition of Flamsteed’s celestial atlas in a much reduced format. Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal, who oversaw the building of the Greenwich Observatory. Newton relied upon Flamsteed’s star positions in his Principia.

Bode created a new constellation, Herschels Teleskop, near Auriga, to honor William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in 1781. This Bode-Fortin-Flamsteed atlas is a 1782 German edition of Fortin’s 1776 reprinting of Flamsteed’s 1729 atlas.

Lost plates for treatises on teeth, hearing and the kidneys, rediscovered: In the 1560’s, Eustachi, a professor of medicine in the Collegia della Sapienza in Rome, wrote several treatises devoted to particular organs of the body, including a pioneering work on the teeth.

Despite a lack of publications, Leonardo’s fame grew as word of his notebooks spread. The first work by Leonardo to be printed was his Treatise on Painting, published a century after his death. That 1651 Italian edition is on display at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Spring 2016.

Stevin’s work represents that of a scientist-engineer in the Low Countries, whose major works appeared in Dutch. Like the scientist-engineers of Italy, Stevin maintained water systems and improved fortifications. He investigated the mechanics of motion, falling bodies and hydraulics.

Biblical accounts of the creation week, deluge, and future conflagration provided early modern naturalists with an idiom for exploring changes in the Earth over time. Scheuchzer was a leading Swiss naturalist and an advocate for the organic origin of fossils.

Four leaves of colored, interactive anatomical flaps appear throughout this popular anatomical textbook, which recapitulates the combination of art, engineering and anatomy in Galileo’s world.

Galileo’s mechanics demonstrated that projectiles follow a parabolic path. This is true whether the projectile is a cannonball, an arrow or a football. This set of four Japanese Samurai manuscripts, drawn on rice paper in the mid 1800’s, was copied by hand from mid-16th-century sources.