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Chargement... Eye for Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500-1630par Florike Egmond
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Image-transforming techniques such as close-up, time lapse, and layering are generally associated with the age of photography, but as Florike Egmond shows in this book, they were already being used half a millennium ago. Exploring the world of natural history drawings from the Renaissance, 'Eye for Detail' shows how the function of identification led to image manipulation techniques that will look uncannily familiar to the modern viewer. Egmond shows how the format of images in nature studies changed dramatically during the Renaissance period, as high-definition naturalistic representation became the rule during a robust output of plant and animal drawings. She examines what visual techniques like magnification can tell us about how early modern Europeans studied and ordered living nature, and she focuses on how attention to visual detail was motivated by an overriding question: the secret of the origins of life. Beautifully and precisely illustrated throughout, this volume serves as an arresting guide to the massive European collections of nature drawings and an absorbing study of natural history art of the sixteenth century. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)508.0222Natural sciences and mathematics General Science Natural historyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Florike is apparently Dutch and presumably writing in a second language. Hard to fault her grammar but the subject matter and the style is heavy going. She is examining these old drawings and paintings to draw some conclusions about cultural change. For example, collectors of animal drawings tended to be interested in unusual examples (monsters) ...those with two heads or six legs etc. (interestingly enough that's still happening...I saw a news article two days ago featuring a puppy born with six legs). However with botanical drawing there was more interest in getting a likeness that would help in recognition. And Florike devotes a huge number of words to investigating whether they were painting exactly what they saw (generally no) or some sort of idealised plant (generally flawless).....and it seemed to be mainly the latter. Painters were also faced with decisions about scale.....hard to fit a tree onto a page and still get details about the leaves and flowers. So various compromises were made. Notably the "zoom" feature which allowed painters to add magnified features on the same page.
Some of the early collectors simply cut-out earlier paintings and re-mounted them .....sometimes in settings of their own. And sometimes re-painting details that had been lost in the cutting-out process.
Of all the artists featured I must say that I liked the work of Conrad Gessner the most. ...He has a nice combination of realism (and accuracy) together with "zoomed" features for various parts of the plants.
Something that I hadn't truly appreciated was that there was often a considerable gap between a drawing/painting being produced and having a print made of the work. (Of course, it's only relatively recently that Joseph Bank's huge collection of drawings have actually been printed). But, also, in the printing process, frequently, the zoomed details were omitted. Pity.
Florike also makes a considerable "meal" of the fact that early observers did pretty well just using their own eyes or maybe a hand lens and, whilst the details improved after they had access to microscopes) the style of presentation tended to remain the same. (Using zoomed details , for example).
I guess it's written as an academic text ....with lots of references to work that was not actually on display ...though the range of displayed items seems fairly narrow anyway. But bottom line, it's rather tedious and, I think, would have been much better with 25% of the text and more pictures.
I give it two stars. ( )