Sign up for FlowVella
Sign up with FacebookAlready have an account? Sign in now
By registering you are agreeing to our
Terms of Service
Loading Flow
USERS' PORTRAITS
Tap on an object to learn more
A portrait is the most immediate way for a sitter to present his or her self-image, profession, and knowledge. This section looks at representations of artists, artisans, and natural philosophers at work with their tools and instruments. Although not all portraits in the strictest sense, these prints and books present four ways in which individuals interact with tools to gain knowledge and produce artifacts. Together, they offer a variety of possible relationships between instruments and their users.
For a humanist such as Petrus Ramus, instruments are more akin to symbolic tokens that give credence to his intellectual authority. The frontispiece to the posthumous edition of Galileo Galilei’s work elevates his telescope from a historical artifact to a tribute of divine knowledge. Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Rembrandt van Rijn present fundamentally divergent views of what an artist is and how he uses tools to create work. What they all share with one another, however, is a prevailing culture of productivity, creativity, and experimentation, and a belief in the infinite potential of instruments to create knowledge.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116