Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Anatomia et Magna Lucis

Giulio Casserio Nova anatomia, continens accvratam organorvm sensilivm, tam hvmanorum, quàm animalium brutorum, et delineationem æreis figuris... subiectam, et descriptionem... Opus... iam primùm in Germania visum. 1622


Athanasius Kircher Ars magna lucis et umbrae 1646

The first image is from The Body Revealed: Renaissance and Baroque Anatomical Illustration from William Hunter's Library at the University of Glasgow library website.

The second image was found in the rare text images of University of Kansas Clendening History of Medicine Digital Exhibit.


4 comments :

Anonymous said...

On the subject of Kircher, I've just finished reading Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man who Knew Everything. A few of the essays in it are so-so, but it's very interesting for the most part. I particularly enjoyed Stephen Jay Gould's piece on Kircher's paeleontological views, & Paula Findlen's about the reception & considerable influence of Kircher's works in late 17thC New Spain. I also splashed out on a copy of Athanasius Kircher: Itinerario del Éxtasis o las Imágenes de un Saber Universal, published by Siruela, Madrid, which is like having the contents of that Stanford gallery web-site of all the images from Kircher's many tomes printed in a single, big, beautifully-produced book (albeit with Spanish text.)

peacay said...

Ooh I'm a little bit jealous of having hard copy material. It's about time you put up your own Kircher site isn't it? Heh.

I had seen mention of the Siruela book in the comments in your last Kircher post. Wow..520 illustrations - I just googletranslated the link.

If I had much of a clue about HTML I'd probably snaffle a detail from that Magna Lucis pic for a logo/talisman.

Anonymous said...

It's about all I can manage to put one or two regular weblog entries a week: much as I admire your industriousness here, I'd probably sprain something if I attempted to emulate it. I hope to patch together some kind of post about Kircher, but as for a whole site on the subject: I'd have to leave that for someone more dedicated...

peacay said...

It's a product of -

*enough time on my hands at present
*beginner's enthusiam which will no doubt wane
*having a bunch of links lying around not so suitable for the MeFi-sites thing

I hope it's complementary to sites that are out there which is why for the mostpart I'm trying to find my own stuff, link stolen from you notwithstanding.

I'm also not really adding much in the way of 'content' as it were, other than paraphrasing what I read, so I feel a bit more impetus of umm...I don't know...research intrepidness or something.

But as I say, all this may dissolve into occasional spurts etc. We shall see - but it's fun at present and I'm learning a lot anyway.

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