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Spanish calligrapher and woodcutter, Pedro Diaz Morante (1565-1636), devised a new system for teaching cursive writing which was released in five parts between (I think) 1615 and 1631. Were these wonderfully ornate and quirky flourishes in page image format and not merely microfilm copies, I would have quite happily devoted a whole post to them (the white background figures above were cleaned up quite a bit).

There are four pages of thumbnail images from 'Nueva Arte de Escreuir' at the University of Seville. Incidentally, Morante was said to have been able to write equally well with either hand, a feat that had him brought before before the Spanish Inquisition at one stage. [see also: Paperpenalia for calligraphic motifs by Morante (and others); and if you read Spanish, the Miguel D Cervantes Digital Library have an illustrated html version of 'Arte de la Escritura y de la Caligrafía : Teoría y Práctica' by Rufino Blanco y Sánchez (1902)]

[Regarding the missing images below: see the ADDIT note at the bottom]

"Martin Frobenius Ledermüller (1719-69) was a German physician and keeper of the natural history collection of the Margrave of Brandenburg-Colmbach." "[He] settled down in Nuremberg in 1749, after having been wandering about for many years as a soldier and a secretary, and started his valuable microscopical observations under the protection and direction of the famous Dr. C.J. Trew."

The slender volume about barley (and?) from which the above illustrations were taken is titled: 'Phisicalisch mikroskopische Vorstellung und Zergliederung einer angeblichen Rokenpflanze, das Staudten, Stek- oder Gerstenkorn' and is online at the Universities of Strasbourg [link updated Feb. 2013]. [quotes taken from the Microscopy editions page at Antiquariaat Junk, which has a few Ledermüller books]









'Mémoire Aptérologique' (1804) from the French doctor and entomologist specialising in spiders and mites, Jean Frédéric Hermann - at the Universities of Strasbourg (nine plates in total, at the back of the book)




'Chemical Atlas or The Chemistry of Familiar Objects' by Edward Livingston Youmans (1855) at Strasbourg Universities.








Andrew Pritchard was more of an optician, spectaclemaker and retailer of microscopes rather than a biologist, per se. He collaborated with C R Goring to publish a number of works on the microscope in the 1830s including '300 animalcules Infusoires, Dessinés à l'Aide du Microscope' (1838) at the Universities of Strasbourg, which I'm fairly sure is the French translation of 'The Natural History of Animalcules: containing Descriptions of all the Known Species of Infusoria with Instructions for Procuring and Viewing Them' from 1834 (on googlebooks). Very reminiscent of the great Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (also).





My notes merely say(s): "alchemy"; but I know it was uploaded in the last few weeks to one of the German University libraries. Beyond that...I don't recall.








The Babylon and Egyptian illustrations were engraved by Philip Galle after designs by Marten van Heemskerck for a 1572 series on the seven wonders of the world. [from Virtuelle Kupferstichkabinett]





This is by far the most striking image from a suite of bird prints by the fabulously named Balthasar Caymox (approx. 1610-1625) [from Virtuelle Kupferstichkabinett]

Master of the Burin - The Book Illustrations of John Buckland-Wright
(1897-1954) at the Otago University Library in New Zealand.

My notes say: "Caspar Barthen Deutscher Phoenix Franckfuhrt am Mayn - Aubry, 1626" and it's likely from either HAB or MDZ libraries in Germany; but it's newly online and resistant to searching. This was the singular worthy image from the book from memory anyway.

Castor Bean - Ricinus communis

Pasque Flower - Pulsatilla hirsutissima

The University of Colorado Herbarium has a collection of forty-one botanical watercolors painted by the artist Ida Hrubesky Pemberton during the 1930s and 1940s.

Psalm Eight © Debra Band - Judaic Art | Biblical calligraphy. [via]

Addit: Debra Band will give an illustrated
lecture at the Library of Congress on January 17, 2008.

"Aurelio O'Brien transports us to a future where technology has been replaced by biology in the form of genetically engineered CreatureComforts™" - and uses a fun and novel approach to showcase his book on the internet.

Cropped image taken from 'Homer Nach Antiken Gezeichnet' 1801
out of the archaeological collection at the University of Heidelberg.

'Indianer von Topinambous' by Joachim du Viert, 1613.
[from Virtuelle Kupferstichkabinett]

More of the highly stylised renderings of the Brazilian native Tupinamba tribe that served as one of the oft-used visual models for understanding the New World*.











These three woodcuts are from 'Die Türckisch Chronica' (The Turkish Chronicle, funnily enough) by Johannes Adelphus from 1516 (2nd Ed. First: published in 1513) at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Adelphus was a humanist doctor from Alsace whose book documents the Ottoman Empire from its beginnings up to 1500, with a special emphasis on the Crusades.

Asherbooks articulate the 'something' that drew my attention to the illustrations when I briefly scanned the book: "Some woodcuts show a perspective and style reminiscent of mediaeval art, while others are good examples of Renaissance work showing modern perspective and rendering each figure with personal character."








The figures of Jupiter and Mercury from one manuscript version of the traditional iconographic theme of 'planetenkinder' (children of the planets) [previously: Planetary Arts; The Medical Astrology Calendar of 1487].

As I understand it, the deification of the seven classical planets manifested itself in Germany in the Medieval Housebook ('Das Mittelalterliche Hausbuch') in which allegorical pictures showed how each of the planets had an influence on particular types of people and activities. The planets owed their individual characteristics to the pagan deities with which they had been associated since ancient times, and also to their peculiar movements and behaviour in the heavens.

Thus saturn, being the furthest, coldest and therefore slowest moving body, is associated with melancholy, old age and illness and so on. The present ink(?) drawings are from a set of seven images from the 15th century scanned by Arend Smilde from his local University Library (Utrecht presumably). [See the translated German wikipedia site on planetenkinder]

'Nouvelle carte d'Europe dressée pour 1870 -
Carte drôlatique d'Europe pour 1870'
- political cartographic caricature by Paul Hadol. (spliced from screencaps)

George Glazer Gallery translate the caption as: "England enraged forgets Ireland but still keeps it in her power. Spain & Portugal smoke away lazily. France tries to overthrow Prussia who advances one hand on Holland & knee over Austria. Italy advises Bismark to keep off. Corsica & Sardinia laugh on at all. Denmark hopes to recover Holstein. Turkey is drowsily awaking from smoke. Sweden crouching like a panther. Russia a beggar trying for anything to fill his basket."

The map comes from Beeldbank Musea from Belgium - an amalgamation of pictures (prints, numismatics, furniture, books, sculpture, textiles and more) from Antwerp Museums. No english is no problem - an easy and worthy browse.



I found this at the above Antwerp site too and went to the trouble of splicing it together from screencaps and then discovered a better version (the image above) at the Rijksmuseum (bottom of page). This monster insect engraving stands out amongst a stylised but otherwise fairly unremarkable fauna series by Joos de Bosscher, 1620.





I've saved this 19th century image for a couple of months waiting for the full exhibition site to go live at the University of Oxford, and although progress seems to be stalled, the site is still worth visiting : "Small Worlds: the Art of the Invisible is an exhibition of the miniature world of microscopic specimens, revealing the strange and wonderful contents of the Museum’s collection of some ten thousand slides."

'The French Lady in London, or the Head Dress for the Year 1771'
(anonymous, after Samuel Hieronymus Grimm)

Vive la Différence! - The English and French Stereotype in Prints, 1720 to 1815 at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge [via gmtPlus9(-15)]





From the fantastic and exemplary John Tenniel and the American Civil War - Political Cartoons from the Civil War site. "A Free-Use Education Resource" [via Mefi] {Tenniel did the original Alice in Wonderland drawings}

Cutaway sketch of the Church of the Abbey of St Louis
in Metz by Johann Wolff (after JF Blondel) - 1790.

1788 sketch by Johann Wolff - French church in Potsdam.

The Kassel Museum in Germany has an online collection of some 4000 architectural drawings (plans, garden layouts and sketches) from the 17th to 20th centuries. Browse by architect/designer or by city (across Europe). (click 'Startseite')

Yesterday's Airports of Today!
A 1935 model for an underground air terminal.

From the excellent new Smithsonian website - America by Air - coinciding with a current exhibtion charting the history of commercial aviation. [via Metroblogging DC - Brownpau visited the exhibition last weekend and has posted a flickr photo set]


Other things...

• Matt from Rashomon has created a wonderful short film using the sketches of Cyprian Norwid from the Polish Digital Library, accompanied by Chopin.
• In parallel news, NYPL Labs announced that the NYPL Digital Gallery can now be accessed as editable clips through the Kaltura group web video platform(warning: sound). Let the mashups begin!
• User shothotbot has gone to an amazing amount of trouble to arrange all the AskMetafilter questions relating to books into a single, logical wiki page: ReadMe.
• 'Used Books Marking Readers in Renaissance England' by William H. Sherman (December 2007 - University of Pennsylvania Press). Looks good. (A non-advertorial moment)
• A (kind of) advertorial moment: while getting on anyone's junkmail list is a fate to be avoided at all costs, I can say in all honesty that I'm quite happy to receive copies of the publications released by Princeton Architectural Press [previously]. Their latest offering, 'Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums', traces the development of the travel photo album, with oodles of early 20th century exotic photographs and ephemera assembled by authors Barbara Levine and Kirsten Jensen. It is a beautiful book. [papressblog]
• The French National Library (BNF) have a new english Gallica website in beta release - about which I know almost nothing because I haven't really looked (yet).
• Articulate is ABC News Online's daily take on arts news and events in Australia and throughout the world.
• IZO - Russian Art Scene (in English).
• I haven't had much of a look around the UK Government Art Collection Online Database that features 7000 paintings, drawings, sculpture and textile images - that otherwise live in government buildings in UK and abroad. [via things magazine]
• Addit: Exploring the Early Americas exhibition has begun at the Library of Congress [Online Exhibition].
• ADDIT: A NOTE FOR POSTERITY -- This post, as with an unknown (I haven't checked properly) number of other BibliOdyssey blog posts was populated largely by images that I stored - at the time - at a site called Webshots. In the last year, that business was sold and the new owners allege they contacted everyone to tell them to retrieve their stocks. I never received any notice at all. Consequently I didn't discover that ALL of my uploads to Webshots had been deleted until recently. A snapshot of the page showing the images is available via the Wayback Machine, but the images can't be embiggened. I'm quite bitter about this because I've always gone to great lengths to keep and maintain order within the 8+ years of archives in relation to this site so I'm sorry to see outside poor behaviour bring about such a problem. One day I might just try to retrieve, rehost, repatch and recover, but this is a one-man band and forward is the main gear. Such is life...

Kircher's Magnetism

Frontispiece: "A magnetic Habsburg eagle. The Latin inscription around the eagle’s feet “Et Boreae et Austri-acus” is a play on words linking the compass needle (“the needle of both North and South” to the house of Austria (“Austriacus”)."













































"Other inventions of Kircher’s also appear to have come under suspicion of demonic magic, including the magnetic anemoscope that he built in Malta, while he was supposed to be providing spiritual guidance to Landgrave Ernst of Hessen-Darmstadt, relied, like many Kircherian machines, on a hidden magnet. The magnet, rotated by a wind-vane, caused a figure of Aeolius, the god of winds, suspended in a glass sphere, to point to the direction of the wind marked on the outside of the sphere. Some of the Knights of Malta who witnessed Kircher’s machine apparently suggested that it must contain a real demon, and Kircher, yet again, had to take pains to demonstrate that his brand of magic was entirely natural."

The Magnetic Oracle

"Kepler, expanding on Gilbert's speculation, described the sun as a huge magnet, whose rotation on its axis caused the earth and planets (themselves smaller magnets) to move around it in orbits. Kircher disproved this by experimenting with actual magnets, and observing that rotation of a large central magnet actually caused a sympathetic axial rotation in its otherwise stationary satellites. On the basis of this phenomenon, Kircher devised a device for 'magnetic hydromancy' in which small wax figures, embedded with magnets and suspended in water-filled globes, could be made to spell out specific messages or forecasts from symbols and letters printed on the surface of their vessels. Controlled by a hand-cranked rotating central magnet, this mechanically simulated divination device, bearing the Hermetic motto 'Nature Rejoices in Nature', epitomizes Kircher's unique blend of skepticism towards paranormal activities and delight in the underlying mysteries of seemingly mundane reality."

Sunflower clock

"To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring. Kircher claimed that it didn't work well because enclosing it in a glass case would block the sun's attractive force, and that it was 'therefore susceptible to inaccuracies due to the wind'."



In the 16th and 17th centuries (mostly), one of the strangest known medical or psychological illnesses manifested in Southern Italy, centred around the coastal town of Taranto. A syndrome known as tarantism (or dancing mania) in which victims (often young women) displayed unusual symptoms that were attributed to a bite from a tarantula (actually, a wolf spider: Lycosa tarentula) was first reported in the 14th century. Once bitten, a person became lethargic and dizzy with feelings of anguish, strangely mixed with an increased libido and a bizarre frenzied dance compulsion.

Although it has been fairly described as a form of mass hysteria (the spider was more of a symbolic accessory) relating to the mix of traditional pagan-religious culture of the local area and periodic suppression orders against some earth magic practices, it is still known to occur today and wasn't even properly studied until the mid-20th century. Anyway ... Athanasius Kircher and others saw specific dance music (good magnetic vibrations) as being the cure and he includes in this picture part of a score - 'Antidotum Tarantula' - of the recommended tarantella - I believe he expands on this later in his 'Musurgia Universalis' tome. [I can see emergency bracelets with "In case of spider bite, play music" or ambulance vans ferrying musical quartets]


Can there be too much Athanasius Kircher? I don't think so. And particularly not when more of his original works come to be accessible online in good quality page image format. They are just so well stocked with eclectic and perplexing images. There will undoubtedly be more.

• 'Magnes Siue De Arte Magnetica Opvs Tripartitvm' 1643 is online at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. (It's the 2nd edition of his original 1631 book known as 'Ars Magnesia', essentially his first published book)
• The above images (plus a bunch more not seen) were saved to this Webshots album. A few of them are the large versions but most are just of regular dimensions. The page numbers are in the alt-tags above (right click the image: properties).
• Biographies: here and here.
• 'Between the Demonic and the Miraculous: Athanasius Kircher and the Baroque Culture of Machines' by MJ Gorman (there's a reason I keep linking to this).
• 'Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything', 2004 Ed. Paula Findlen - there are some reasonable chunks viewable at google books.
• Previously: Sampling Kircher; Musurgia Universalis; Connecting with China; Artificial Magic.