Art and Science

The years spanning c. 1350–1632 witnessed great advances in art and science, while at the same time holding fast to ancient paradigms and Christian moral traditions. By 1350, the pandemic plague known as the Black Death had begun to devastate Europe, sowing in its wake the beginnings of doubt in antique scientific beliefs and visual conventions. The year 1632 marks the publication of Galileo Galilei’s seminal treatise Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which, in one stroke, upended biblical assumptions and overturned the Pythagorean worldview. From this time onward, science and art would evolve primarily from the unconventional discoveries of individual geniuses. The Aristotelian worldview that had dominated for nearly two thousand years would be rapidly overthrown. Before this time, however, the modern perception of art as predominantly emotional and creative, and science as essentially logical and rational, did not exist. The church dominated both pursuits, from the magical transmutations of alchemical laboratories to artists’ optical experiments. In the wake of the fall of Constantinople (1453), the Protestant Reformation (begun in 1517), and the invention of the printing press, the weakened authority of the church, an influx of eastern scholars into western Europe, and increased literacy encouraged challenges to previously held paradigms. Thus began a period of advancement in scientific thinking and artistic naturalism. This new path faced resistance along the way by two powerful authorities: Christianity, which held fast to biblical traditions, and humanism, which revered antique sources above all. Some historians see this historical moment as a “scientific revolution,” which heralded the modern era; others perceive it as the acceleration of a process that began in the ancient world and continues into the present day. Though art and science were intricately and variously conjoined in the Early Modern era, currently there is a rift between the two. Scholars in both fields speculate on precisely how, when, and why this split took place, as historians attempt to join what time has pulled apart. The separation of disciplines in the modern academy, each with its own methodologies, agendas, and vocabularies, makes this difficult. Scholars are generally more concerned with documenting the origins of modern sciences, such as anatomy and botany, than with obsolete pursuits, such as alchemy and astrology. This highly selective article includes scholarship devoted both to the emergent modern sciences and the now-moribund “occult” sciences, which once coexisted. Categories are, by necessity, mutable. Early medicine, for example, employed elements of alchemy, anatomy, astrology, botany, and music, and the academic “quadrivium” of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music supported all intellectual pursuits. These subjects appear here as separate categories, cross-listed to each other. Entries range from broad contextual readings to singular interpretations of individual works. Underlying all is an informed understanding of the histories of art and science, mutual respect for both, and a common vocabulary that attempts to bridge the chasm.

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