ABSTRACT
In his excellent work Anamorphoses ou perspectives curieuses (1955), Baltrusaitis concluded the chapter on catoptric anamorphosis with an allusion to the small engraving by Hans Tröschel (1585-1628) after Simon Vouet's drawing Eight satyrs observing an elephant reflected on a cylinder, the first known representation of a cylindrical anamorphosis made in Europe. This paper explores the Baroque intellectual and artistic context in which Vouet made his drawing, attempting to answer two central sets of questions. Firstly, why did Vouet make this image? For what purpose did he ideate such a curious image? Was it commissioned or did Vouet intend to offer it to someone? And if so, to whom? A reconstruction of this story leads me to conclude that the cylindrical anamorphosis was conceived as an emblem for Prince Maurice of Savoy. Secondly, how did what was originally the project for a sophisticated emblem give rise in Paris, after the return of Vouet from Italy in 1627, to the geometrical study of catoptrical anamorphosis? Through the study of this case, I hope to show that in early modern science the emblematic tradition was not only linked to natural history, but that insofar as it was a central feature of Baroque culture, it seeped into other branches of scientific inquiry, in this case the development of catoptrical anamorphosis. Vouet's image is also a good example of how the visual and artistic poetics of the baroque were closely linked--to the point of being inseparable--with the scientific developments of the period.
Subject(s)
Elephants , Emblems and Insignia/history , Engraving and Engravings/history , Optics and Photonics/history , Animals , History, 17th Century , Italy , Natural History/history , ParisABSTRACT
La ciudad feliz de Francesco Patrizi ha sido casi siempre considerada como una obra perteneciente a la literatura utópica del siglo XVI o como una imagen filosófica de la Venecia real. En este artículo mantengo, en cambio, que Patrizi ideó su Ciudad feliz para defender el modelo político aristocrático expuesto por Aristóteles en su Política y justificarlo con los principios de la medicina platónica que Marsilio Ficino había elaborado en su De vita. Tal intento llevó a Patrizi a describir la ciudad como un cuerpo humano, recurriendo a los principios de la medicina hipocrático-galénica para explicar su funcionamiento y llegando a mantener que el orden de la ciudad es el resultado de la necesidad que tiene el cuerpo cívico de conserva la cantidad y calidad de sus espíritus naturales, vitales y animales (AU)
Besides some disagreements, La città felice of Francesco Patrizi has usually been considered both as a work belonging to the utopian genre of sixteenth century or as a philosophical portrait of the real Venice. In this essay, I maintain, instead, that La città felice was born in Patrizi's mind from his attempt to support the Aristotelian political, aristocratic, order and to justify it according to the principles of the philosophical and Platonic medicine of Marsilio Ficino. Such an attempt led him to describe the polis as a human body, applying the Hippocratic-Galenic system to explain its internal functions and considering that the political order of the city arises from the civic body's needs for maintaining the quantity and quality of natural, vital and animal spiritus (AU)