Janson-La Palme Conference ∙ The Lure of the Machine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, April 14–15

Date
Friday, April 14, 2023, 9:30 am – Saturday, April 15, 2023, 5:00 pm
Louis A. Simpson International Building A71
Register
Related link
Conference Schedule and Participant Abstracts

Speakers

  • Pamela O. Long
    Convener of conference, Robert Janson-La Palme Visiting Scholar, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
    Keynote: Machines between Learning and Practice in Early Modern Europe
  • Buket Altinoba
    Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Paola Bertucci
    Yale University
  • Alison Calhoun
    University of Indiana
  • Samuel Holzman
    Princeton University
  • Matthew C. Hunter
    McGill University
  • Jessica Keating
    Carleton College
  • Craig Martin
    Ca’ Foscari University
  • Caroline Murphy
    Villanova University
  • Elly R. Truitt
    University of Pennsylvania
  • Matteo Valleriani
    Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  • Steven Walton
    Michigan Technological University
  • Carolyn Yerkes
    Princeton University
  • Cristiano Zanetti
    California Institute of Technology

Details

machinery gears

Leonardo da Vinci, Hoisting Device. Codex Atlanticus, fol. 30v.

Keynote by Pamela O. Long on Friday April 14 at 4:30pm

Machines between Learning and Practice in Early Modern Europe

In this talk I focus on images of machines and the texts that accompanied them from the 1470s through the mid-sixteenth century. I compare the machine drawings of two contemporaries, the painter/architect/engineer Francesco di Giorgio and Francesco’s younger contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Using Francesco’s Trattati and Leonardo’s Madrid Codex I, I explore both the practical and intellectual contexts of machine books and machine drawings. Examples include drawings of cranes, and of machine parts such as gears.  Knowledge traditions include Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanics, the medieval science of weights, and the influence of Vitruvius’s De architectura and its Book X on machines. Practices include machines for constructing buildings such as cranes and machines for warfare. Traditions of text and image focusing on machines include sixteenth-century Vitruvian commentaries and the “Theaters of Machines,” by Jacques Besson and Agostino Ramelli. This talk will focus on the overlapping interests and multidisciplinary nature of the early modern fascination with machines.

Open to the public and registration requested.

Sponsor
Department of Art & Archaeology
Contact
Mo Chen
[email protected]