Museum Boerhaave in Leiden and Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam organize a one-day expert meeting which addresses the practice of microscopy in the Netherlands. The period under investigation roughly covers the era between the pioneering discoveries in the second half of the seventeenth century which established the microscope’s place in observation, and the…

What is it to perceive something? How is taste different from touch? Can instruments such as sticks or microscopes extend our senses? Issues about perception are at the heart of many early modern philosophical debates. They drive puzzles about what we can know, how we experience, what exists, as well as moral considerations about how…

Donna Bilak has reviewed both Sven Dupré (ed.), Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century and Sven Dupré, Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, and Beat Wismer (eds.), Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation: review published in the Sept. 2016 issue of Isis. “The exhibition ‘Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation,’…

From antiquity up to the early modern period, it is hard to tell where alchemical practices ended and artisanal practices began. One of the places where the hybridity between alchemy and art can clearly be seen at work is in artisanal recipe books that usually covered a wide array of different practices, ranging from colour-making…

De Kunsthistorische Dag 2016 wordt gehouden op zaterdag 12 november. Op deze dag staat het onderwerp ‘Technische kunstgeschiedenis’ centraal: wat is het? Wat doet het? Wat brengt het? Vorig jaar verscheen een advertentie van een Nederlands museum voor de positie van een technical art historian. Zo’n functieomschrijving is nooit eerder uitgeschreven; het bewijst dat een…