Tonal Disturbance

In 1799 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) published a series of 80 prints called 'Los Caprichos'. In his masterly hands the aquatint etching technique cloaks the line art with subtle and varying tonal effects. This afforded Goya the opportunity, as biographer Robert Hughes says, to

"exalt the scribble, the puddle, the blot, the smear, the suggestive beauty of the unfinished--and, above all, the primal struggle of light and dark, that flux from which all consciousness of shape is born."

Like the artist himself, 'Los Caprichos' are complex and open to a range of interpretations. Goya suffered from what seems to have been a disabling bout of meningitis in 1792 which left him stone deaf for the remainder of his life. The illness and resulting alienation and depression provided him with a unique insight into a nightmare world of torment that he so ably transfers to his prints.

Goya lived in a time of social upheaval with the French Revolution, the religious excesses of the Inquisition and the progressive thinking of the Enlightenment manifesting as significant influences. He attacks all manner of human superstition, prejudice, hypocrisy and stupidity in his etchings, whilst subtly mocking the church and state for keeping the people in misery and ignorance.

To avoid alienating his benefactors at Court and to protect himself from the wrath of the Inquisition, Goya masks his satire with the inclusion of demonic and perverse fantasy figures that defy a single understanding. This code of symbolism in the series has provided scholars with a rich vein to mine and has been referred to by some as visual language.

• The images above - the best set online in my opinion - come from the Calcografía Nacional site. It does require some interpretative clicking.
• The easiest place to see all 80 etchings from 'Los Caprichos' is at wikimedia commons (sourced from Arno Schmidt Reference Library).
• Goya at Biblioteca Nacional de España (Las Estampas).
• The Hughes quote above comes from an article by Linda Simon - 'The Sleep of Reason' - at The World & I.
• Francisco de Goya y Lucientes - a host of links.
• Mouseover the images above (which were uploaded at full size) for spanish and english titles - the latter come from the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University.

Fludd Returns

These are further example illustrations from mystic rosicrucian Robert Fludd's 'De Naturae Simia'. This book forms part of the encyclopaedic series issued over 9 years to 1626 called 'Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minores Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia'. Although it doesn't appear to be stated anywhere, I had a distinct feeling that the University of Utah website contains more than just the 'De Naturae Simia' illustrations.

The images above and in the previous post on Flood constitute a very small sampling of the veritable multitude of illustrations from Merian/de Bry seen throughout Fludd's work. Again, you can find the page/section locations for each image by checking the alt tags.

As with so many publications from this period it's difficult to speculate about the extent to which the contents may have been copied or modified from other sources. Certainly the machines and the fortification and perspective images above bear similarities to earlier works (think Dürer and Ramelli) but these subjects were at the forefront of technological theorizing during the renaissance so a certain repetition of core design principles (the waterwheel for instance) could be expected. There is also the influence and experience (and reused engraving plates!) that the printshop and illustrators brought to the projects.

Fludd is credited with one theoretical concept (not shown above) that, to an extent supports the notion that he contributed his own ideas, rather than merely extracting material from older sources. He described a perpetual motion system in which a water source would turn a wheel which in turn would be able to both grind grain and also drive an Archimedes screw pump to return the water to its origin, able to fall again and continue to power the process. It's completely fanciful of course but this was an era when there was no knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics and speculative entrepreneurs even attempted to obtain patents on aspects of Fludd's design up to the 19th century.

• Perpetual Motion.
• Professor Hibbert's Perpetual Motion Pages.
• Perpetual Futility - A short history of the search for perpetual motion.
• Will someone build a perpetual motion machine?
• The Museum of unworkable devices.

Update:

• HP-Gramatke: Perpetuum Mobile
• The complete scanned 'Utrisque cosmici' by Robert Fludd at the Max Planck Society ECHO Project.

Flute Prints

'Un Faiseur de Flutte' (A Male Wind Instrument Maker)
Michael Rössler, mid-18th century

'The Enraged Musician'
William Hogarth , 1741

'Musique'
Louis Eugène Pirodon, 19th century (after Emmanuel Notterman)

'Le Concert'
Louis-Léopold Boilly, 19th century

'Das Mannerbad' (The Men's Bath)
Albrecht Dürer , c. 1496-97

'La Lutte Artistique' (The Artistic Struggle)
Jules Worms, 19th century

These are just a few of the 33 prints from the Dayton C. Miller Iconography Collection at the Library of Congress.

• Flute history.
• Iconography of the early flute.
• Long military flutes of the Sixteenth Century.
• En français: La flûte traversière en Europe aux XVIème et XVIIème siècles.
• The renaissance flute.
• The history of the flute.
• Links to history of musical instruments.
• Flute Info.
• Previously: pipes.