Claudia Swan - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Claudia Swan

Nuncius, Sep 10, 2020

The subject of this special issue is early modern geometries, a plurality of practical and theore... more The subject of this special issue is early modern geometries, a plurality of practical and theoretical concerns that animated artistic, scientific, and other pursuits too. There is but one Euclid (c. 325-265 BCE), the Greek mathematician whose axiomatic geometry of planes and solids gave the rule to measures of number in space well into the modern era. One of the four modes of study that comprised the quadrivium, a curricular model established by Plato, geometry is considered a unit of study, alongside arithmetic, music, and astronomy.1 But in the early modern era, there was a geometry for everyone. Appropriately, given the venue in which this collection of papers appears, the various applications of geometrical principles that shaped early modern practices -from geodesics, cartography, and fencing to perspective, mining, and typography -were enabled and driven by the publication of illustrated, practical treatises and the disciplined production of instruments.2 The unremitting 1 On curricular reforms and theoretical innovations in sixteenth-century Germany especially among Lutheran scholars, see Jennifer Nelson, Disharmony of the Spheres.

The Uses of Realism in Early Modern Illustrated Botany

From blowfish to flower still life painting. Classification and its images ca. 1600

Ad vivum, naer het leven, from the life: Considerations on a Mode of Representation

The Nature of Exotic Shells

Conchophilia, 2021

The opening chapter of Conchophilia. Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton... more The opening chapter of Conchophilia. Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021). Addresses the labor that enabled the collection of exotic shells in the Netherlands and Europe more generally, and focuses on the work of Georg Eberhard Rumphius.

Review of Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World by Benjamin Schmidt

Caa.reviews, 2016

Lectura-Imago-Ostensio : the Role of the Libri picturati A.18-A.30 in Medical Instruction at the Leiden University

Early Modern Art and Science

Medical Culture at Leiden University ca. 1600

Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 2001

Image, Imagination, and Cognition, 2018

Notes on the Contributors Guy Claessens obtained his PhD in Classics at the University of Leuven;... more Notes on the Contributors Guy Claessens obtained his PhD in Classics at the University of Leuven; his dissertation studies the Renaissance reception of Proclus' Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements. His current research focuses on the reception of Proclus' natural philosophy from the fifteenth century onward and on Renaissance commentaries on Plato's Timaeus. He has published several articles on Neoplatonic concepts of imagination and matter in the Renaissance. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at the University of Leuven.

14 Fortunes at Sea: Mediated Goods and Dutch Trade, Circa 1600

Sites of Mediation, 2016

Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1999

Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe

A captivating historical look at the cultural and artistic significance of shells in early modern... more A captivating historical look at the cultural and artistic significance of shells in early modern Europe Among nature’s most artful creations, shells have long inspired the curiosity and passion of artisans, artists, collectors, and thinkers. Conchophilia delves into the intimate relationship between shells and people, offering an unprecedented account of the early modern era when the influx of exotic shells to Europe fueled their study and representation as never before. From elaborate nautilus cups and shell-encrusted grottoes to delicate miniatures, this richly illustrated book reveals how the love of shells intersected not only with the rise of natural history and global trade but also with philosophical inquiry, issues of race and gender, and the ascent of art-historical connoisseurship. Shells circulated at the nexus of commerce and intellectual pursuit, suggesting new ways of thinking about relationships between Europe and the rest of the world. The authors focus on northern Europe, where the interest and trade in shells had its greatest impact on the visual arts. They consider how shells were perceived as exotic objects, the role of shells in courtly collections, their place in still-life tableaus, and the connections between their forms and those of the human body. They examine how artists gilded, carved, etched, and inked shells to evoke the permeable boundary between art and nature. These interactions with shells shaped the ways that early modern individuals perceived their relation to the natural world, and their endeavors of art and knowledge. Spanning painting and print to architecture and the decorative arts, Conchophilia uncovers the fascinating ways that shells were circulated, depicted, collected, and valued, during a time of remarkable global change.

Mirrors: Oxford Companion to the History of the Body

The father of modernism: On an awe-inspiring, enigmatic artist of the Dutch Golden Age

Tls-the Times Literary Supplement, 2017

Portraits: Oxford Companion to the History of the Body

LONDA SCHIEBINGER and CLAUDIA SWAN (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. vi+346. ISBN 0-8122-3827-3. £36.00, $55.00 (hardback)

The British Journal for the History of Science, 2006

kritische berichte - Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften, Oct 1, 2012