Ingenuity in the Making: Matter and Technique in Early Modern Europe

408 Pages·2021·15.422 MB·English

by  Richard J. Oosterhoff (editor), Jose Ramon Marcaida (editor), Alexander Marr (editor)

INGENUITY in the MAKING

Ingenuity
Making
in the
Matter and Technique
in Early Modern Europe
Edited by
Richard J. Oosterhoff,
José Ramón Marcaida,
and Alexander Marr
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2021, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publicaiton data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4688-5
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4688-2
Cover art: Peter Paul Rubens, Vulcan forging the thunderbolts of Jupiter, 1636–1638. Oil
on canvas, 182.5 x 99.5 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain © Photographic
Archive Museo Nacional del Prado
Cover design: Melissa Dias-Mandoly
for Carmen, Judah, Luis, Norah, Poppy, Sydney

Contents
ix Acknowledgments
3 Introduction
RichaRd J. OOsteRhOff
PART I: THE NATURES OF MATTER
13 1. Spirited Matter and Ingenious Nature: Accounting for Alchemical
Change
JennifeR M. RaMpling
25 2. Deceiving the Senses: The Role of Vapors in Francis Bacon’s
Natural Philosophy
dOina- cRistina Rusu
36 3. Robert Boyle’s Restless Gems
Michael BycROft
50 4. Handsteine: The Generative Powers of a Mineral Artifact
andRés Vélez- pOsada
PART II: BODIES, LABOR, AND TECHNIQUE
65 5. Ingenuity, Sweat, and Bloodsour Work in Sixteenth- Century
Mining Literature
tina asMussen
79 6. Calligraphy and Metamorphosis: Invention and Imitation in a
Sixteenth- Century Craft
hannah MuRphy
94 7. Ingeniosa peritia: The Languages of Ingenuity in Italian
Renaissance Anatomy
Viktoria Von Hoffmann
112 8. The Contested Ingenia of Early Modern Anatomy: Continuities
and Conflicts in Medical Training at Leiden University,
1592–1678
EVan r. ragland
131 9. From Ingenuity to Genius and Technique: Shifting Concepts in
Eighteenth- Century Theories of Art and Craft
mariEkE m. a. HEndriksEn
COLOR PLATES FOLLOW PAGE 142
PART III: CRAFTY MAKERS ON DISPLAY
145 10. Ingenious Monks and Their Machines: Trickery and Wonder in
Sculptures with Movable Parts in Pre- and Reformation-Era
Europe
CHristina nEilson
156 11. Ingenuity in the Garden: From the Poetics of Grafting to Divine
Mathematics
dEnis ribouillault
174 12. A Charlatan’s Ingenuity: Juggling, Joking, and Medical Reform in
Johann Ernst Burggrav’s Lamp of Life and Death
VEra kEllEr
189 13. New World Feathers and the Matter of Early Modern Ingenuity:
Digital Microscopes, Period Hands, and Period Eyes
stEfan Hanß
203 14. Unpacking Foreign Ingenuity: The German Conquest of Artful
Objects with “Indian” Provenance
anna grasskamp
219 Notes
313 Bibliography
371 Contributors
377 Index
Acknowledgments
Late in the editing process of this book, Richard approached José tri-
umphantly clutching a promising ingenuity reference— only to dis-
cover that he had gotten the reference from José to begin with, years
earlier. This captures the ways our worlds have come to overlap during the
years of collaboration on this and related works. The rationes seminales
of this book were set in a three- day conference of the same title, hosted at
Trinity Hall and CRASSH, University of Cambridge, May 10–12, 2017, as
part of the project Genius before Romanticism (2014–2019) led by Alex and
funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Sev-
enth Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no.
617391. We are grateful to all of the participants in that conference for their
rich contributions.
One of the pleasures of this project has been working with such a talented
gathering of cutting- edge, up- and- coming scholars. A side effect was that
some chapters got hung up as people took new jobs or responded to other
exigencies. We wish to thank all the authors for their kindness and endurance
as the book took form. Thank you to Puck Fletcher for expert, swift editing
of copy at an early stage, and to Judy Loeven later on. The School of Art His-
tory at the University of St Andrews, and the School of History, Classics and
Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh have generously helped to fund
the images featured in this book; we are grateful for their support. We also
owe particular thanks to our heroic anonymous reviewers, who managed to
return thorough, enthusiastic, and helpful comments at the height of a global
pandemic. And we’re grateful to our commissioning editor, Abby Collier,
whose patience we have surely stretched.
Most of all, we all have depended on the patience and kindness of our fam-
ilies during these years. A profound thank you to them.