The Intellectual and the Artisan: Wenzel Jamnitzer and Bernard Palissy Uncover the Secrets of Nature

NOTES

• The most important literature on art and science in European collections of the early modern period includes The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe, eds Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1985), Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993), Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: U of California P, 1994), Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammeins 1450–1800, ed. Andreas Grote (Opladen: Leske Sc Budrich, 1994), and Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cull of the Machine, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1995).
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• The jug no longer exists, and to ray knowledge no drawings or sketches of it have survived.
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• Ernst Kris, “Der Stil Rustique. Die Verwendung des Naturabgusses bei Wenzel Jamnitzer und Bernard Palissy,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 1 (1926) 137–208.
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• The most recent literature on Jamnitzer and Palissy includes Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2004) and idem, “Art, Science, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Isis 97 (2006) 83–100, Hanna Rose Shell, “Casting Life, Recasting Experience: Bernard Palissy's Occupation between Maker and Nature,” Configurations 12 (2004) 1–40, and Andrea Klier, Fixierte Natur. Naturabgu und Effigies im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Reimer, 2004).
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• All translations are the author's own.
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• Palissy's publications are: Architecture & Ordonnance de la Grotte Rustique de Monsieur le Due de Montmorency Connestable de France (Paris, 1562), Recepte Véritable (Paris, 1562) and Discours Admirables (Paris, 1580).
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• The manuscript, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is entitled Ein gar kunstlicher und wolgetzierter Schreibtisch: sampt allerhant kunstlichen silbern und vergulten newerfunden Instrumenten, so darin zu finden zum Gebrauch der geometrischen und astronomischen auch andern schönen und nützlichen Kunsten (A most ingenious and finely decorated writing desk containing all kinds of newly invented and ingenious silver and gilded instruments for use in geometry, astronomy and also the fine and applied arts). It was completed in 1585, the year of Jamnitzer's death.
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• Plato, Timaeus, trans. H.D.P. Lee (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) 72–6.
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• Wenzel Jamnitzer, Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (Nuremberg, 1568) iii. Following the publication of the Perspectiva, Jamnitzer was planning to write a theoretical treatise, which presumably would have explained these ideas in more detail. However, this work was never realised.
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• Jamnitzer quoted in David von Schönherr, “Wenzel Jamnitzers Arbeiten für Erzherzog Ferdinand,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichteforschung (Vienna: Böhlau, 1888) 294. The exchange of letters between Jamnitzer and Ferdinand II documents several commissions for the Archduke's collection.
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• Johann Neudörfer, Des Johann Neudörfer Schreib- und Rechenmeisters zu Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1547), published in Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Vol. X, ed. G.W.K. Lochner (Vienna: Braumüller, 1875; reprint, Osnabrück: Zeller, 1970) 126.
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• ibid.
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• Jamnitzer quoted in Schönherr, “Wenzel Jamnitzers Arbeiten”: 294.
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• Cennini's Trattato della Pittura is now thought to have been written around 1410 rather than 1390, as previously claimed. See Andrea Bolland, “Art and Humanism in early Renaissance Padua: Cennini, Vergerio and Petrarch on Imitation,” Renaissance Quarterly 49.3 (1996) 469–87, and Latifah Troncelliti, “The Making of Cennino Cennini,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 30.2 (2004) 291–325.
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• For an introduction to Riccio ‘s work in general see Charles Avery, “Riccio, Andrea,” The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Macmillan, 1994) 326–31. On renaissance bronzes including Riccio's casts of animals see Von allen Seilen schön. Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, ed. Volker Krahn, exh. cat. (Heidelberg: Ed. Braus, 1995).
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• James Ackerman, “Dürer's Crab,” Ars Auro Prior. Studia loanni Bialostocki sexagenario dedicate (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawn. Nauk., 1981) 291–5, and Elisabeth Trux, Untersuchungen zu den Tierstudien Albrecht Dürers (Munich: Lit Verlag, 1993) 44.
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• Klier, Fixierte Natur. 66.
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• Erik Forssman, “Renaissance, Manierismus und Nürnberger Schmiedekunst” Wenzel Jamnitzer und die Nürnberger Goldschmiedekunst 1500–1700, ed. Gerhart Bott, exh. cat. (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1985) 11–13.
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• Norberto Grammacini, “Das genaue Abbild der Natur—Riccios Tiere und die Theorie des Naturabgusses seit Cennini,” in Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, eds Herbert Beck, Dieter Blume and Peter Bol, exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Liebighaus, 1986) 217–18.
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• Klier, Fixierte Natur. 125–31.
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• Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has interpreted the iconography of the elements and the seasons as imperial allegories in the paintings of Guiseppe Arcimboldo in Mastery of Nature. 100–35.
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• Palissy's treatise on agriculture and geology, the Discours Admirable of 1580 is based on his Paris lectures.
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• On the physical experience of the artisan with particular reference to Palissy see Smith, Body of the Artisan: 100–6, and Shell, “Casting Life, Recasting Experience”: 29–33.
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• Palissy, Discours Admirables in Oeuvres, ed. Anatole France (Paris: Charavay, 1880) 164.
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• On “secret” knowledge in natural history of the early modern period see William Eamon, “From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge: The Origins of the Concept of Openness in Science,” Minerva 23 (1985) 321–47, and idem, “Court, Academy, and Printing House: Patronage and Scientific Careers in Late Renaissance Italy,” Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Gourt, 1500–1750, ed. Bruce Moran (Rochester, NY: Boydell P, 1991) 25–50.
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• A comprehensive discussion of the casts found at this excavation site can be found in Leonard N. Amico, Bernard Palissy In Search of Earthly Paradise (Paris & NY: Flammarion, 1996).
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• Palissy, Architecture & Ordonnance, ed. Edouard Rahir (Paris: Damascène Morgand, 1919) 10.
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• ibid. 11.
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• Palissy, Recepte Véritable in Oeuvres: 82.
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• Palissy, Discours Admirables in Oeuvres. 392.
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