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Illuminating Methods, Picturing Instruments: Tycho Brahe's Instrumental Images

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2021

Ivana Horacek
Ivana Horacek*
Affiliation:
School of Creative Arts, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada
*
Corresponding author: Ivana Horacek, email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article considers the function of twenty-two hand-colored prints of mathematical instruments in Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (Instruments of the renewed astronomy; 1598), a hand-painted presentation treatise dedicated to Emperor Rudolf II and conferred on a network of individuals connected to the imperial court in Prague. Although the accompanying text communicates the instruments’ use and composition, the images demand close inspection because they articulate Brahe's observationally driven astronomy. They do so through structured, repeated, and consecutive representations; through expanded viewer access, achieved by adhering to multiple perspectives; through the juxtaposition of colors, which focuses attention on the heads of the instruments (the part that does the measuring); and through the use of gold paint, which emphasizes the head and brings to mind the very metallic nature of the instruments. Much like an astronomer taking multiple measurements of cosmological phenomena, these images allow viewers and readers, as they leaf through the pages of the treatise, to become virtual participants in Brahe's instauration of astronomy.

Keywords

mathematical instrument illustrationinstrumentationilluminated treatisesobservational astronomyembodied viewingscience and artTycho Brahemateriality
Type
Forum
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 52 , May 2021 , pp. 30 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota.

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Footnotes

This article functions as a preliminary think-piece about the status and agency of images of instruments in early modern presentation treatises.

References

1 Henceforth “the Mechanica.”

2 See Špelda, Daniel, “The Search for Antediluvian Astronomy: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Astronomers’ Conceptions of the Origins of the Science,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 44, no. 156 (2013): 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Mosley, Adam, “The Reformation of Astronomy,” in The Impact of the European Reformation: Princes, Clergy, and People, ed. Heal, Bridget and Grell, Ole Peter (Aldershot, 2008), 244Google Scholar. For the rise of observations as a means of scientific inquiry, see Pomata, Giana, “Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, 1500–1650,” in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. Daston, Lorraine and Lunbeck, Elizabeth (Chicago, 2011), 45–80Google Scholar, and in the same volume, Lorraine Daston, “The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800,” 81–113. For an account of how Brahe improved measurement accuracy using his new instruments and methods, see Gudrun Wolfschmidt, “The Observatories and Instruments of Tycho Brahe,” in Tycho Brahe and Prague: Crossroads of European Science, ed. John Robert Christianson et al., International Symposium on the History of Science in the Rudolphine Period (Frankfurt, 2002), 203–16.

4 For literature on illustrations of mathematical instruments and their relationship to text, see Schmidt, Suzanna Karr and Nichols, Kimberly, Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life (Chicago, 2011)Google Scholar; Dackerman, Susan, ed., Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Boston, 2011)Google Scholar.

5 On instrumentation as a means of renewing astronomy, its deployment through the medium of print, and how the images in the Mechanica generate embodied viewing that speaks to Brahe's observationally driven astronomy, see the fourth chapter of my dissertation, “Alchemy of the Gift: Things, Material Transformations, and Geopolitics at the Court of Rudolf II” (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2015), https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0166243. I thank Bronwen Wilson, Carol Knicely, and Charlotte Townsend-Gault for their invaluable feedback and advice on earlier drafts of this paper. Emma Perkins arrives at similar conclusions in “Instruments of Authority: Tycho Brahe's Technological Illustrations,” History and Technology 34, nos. 3–4 (2018): 259–72. On the importance of instruments in astronomy and Brahe's emphasis on instrumentation specifically, see Mosley, “The Reformation of Astronomy,” 231–50. For a discussion of how Brahe manipulated the patronage network, see John Robert Christianson, On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants (Cambridge, 2000), 207–36. For Brahe's emphasis on observational astronomy, see Almási, Gábor, “Tycho Brahe and the Separation of Astronomy from Astrology: The Making of a New Scientific Discourse,” Science in Context 26, no. 1 (2013): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Perkins, “Instruments of Authority.” However, certain errors in labeling complicate this argument. See the editorial notes in Tycho Brahe, Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, trans. Alena Hadravová, Petr Hadrava, and Jole R. Shackelford (Prague, 1996).

7 Literature that addresses scientific illustration is significant: William Ashworth, “The Scientific Revolution: The Problem of Visual Authority,” in Conference on Critical Problems and Research Frontiers in History of Science and History of Technology (Madison, 1991): 326–48; Brian Baigrie ed., Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto, 1996); Sachiko Kusukawa and Ian Maclean, eds., Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2006); Adam Mosley, “Objects, Texts and Images in the History of Science,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 38, no. 2 (2007): 289–92. Voker R. Remmert, Picturing the Scientific Revolution: Title Engravings in Early Modern Scientific Publications, trans. Ben Kern (Philadelphia, 2011).

8 The copy in Copenhagen is personally dedicated by Brahe to Petr Vok of Rožmberk (1539–1611), a Czech Protestant magnate of the House of Rosenberg and an enthusiastic collector of books who owned a library of ten thousand volumes at his castle of Český Krumlov. According to Victor E. Thoren, the major portion of his library ended up as Swedish booty during the Thirty Years’ War: see The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge, 1990), 467. Rožmberk's copy is one of the finest extant and well-preserved examples. While the argument in this paper extends to other illuminated copies of the Mechanica, a detailed analysis of other copies is beyond the present scope.

9 For a discussion of the circumstances that forced Brahe to leave Denmark, see Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 195–206, and Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg, 334–425.

10 For woodcuts that were produced prior to 1597, see Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg, 381–82. As Thoren explains, in an attempt to regain favor with Christian IV, eighteen of these existing woodcuts were used in a pamphlet made in 1596 (p. 382). The engravings made specifically for the Mechanica include the Quadrans minor orichalcicus inauratus, the Quadrans muralis sive tichonicus, and the Globus magnus orichalcicus.

11 For details surrounding the production and dissemination of the Mechanica, see Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 207–36. For a list of known recipients of the Mechanica, see Wilhelm Norlind, Tycho Brahe: En levnadsteckning med nya bidrag belysande hans liv och verk (Lund, 1970), 286–93, as cited in Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg, 386.

12 As Martin Kemp points out, Apianus's Instrumentum primi mobilis (1543) and Astrononicum caaesareum (1540) “provide only very partial precedents”: “Vision and visualisation in the Illustration of Anatomy and Astronomy from Leonardo to Galileo,” in 1543 and All That: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, ed. G. Freeland and Anthony Corones (Dordrecht, 2000), 37. See also Albert Van Helden, “Telescopes and Authority from Galileo to Cassini,” Osiris 9 (1994): 10; and Allan Chapman, “Tycho Brahe in China: The Jesuit Mission to Peking and the Iconography of European Instrument-Making Processes,” Annals of Science 41 (1984): 417–43.

13 The literature on Rudolf's patronage activities and collecting is vast. See, for example, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Remarks on the Collection of Rudolf II: The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio,” Art Journal 38, no. 1 (1981): 22–28; “From Mastery of the World to Mastery of Nature: The Kunstkammer, Politics, and Science,” in The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1993), 174–94; and “From Treasury to Museum: The Collections of the Austrian Habsburgs,” in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (London, 1994), 137–54. See also Eliška Fučíková, “The Collections of Rudolf II in Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific Museum?,” in The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1985), 47–53; Beket Bukovinská, “Die Kunst- und Schatzkammer Rudolfs II: Der Weg vom Rohmaterial zum Sammlungsobjekt als ein Ereknntnisprozess,” in Akten des XXV Internationalen Kongresses fur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 4, Der Zugang zum Kunstwerk: Schatzkammer, Salon, Ausstellung,“Museum” (Vienna, 1986), 59–62; Eliška Fučíková, “Rudolfovy sbírky,” in Umění na dvoře Rudolfa II, ed. Eliška Fučíková, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka (Prague, 1988), 214–48; and ibid., “Zur Konzeptionen der Rudolfinischen Sammlungen,” in Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II, ed. Eliška Fučíková (Freren, 1988), 59–62.

14 Such as Jost Bürgi, Erasmus Habermel, Thomas Ruckert, and the Augsburg clockmakers Georg Roll, Mattias Rungel, and Christoph Schissler; see R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford, 1973), 187. As Bruce T. Moran explains, the design of machines, automatons, clocks, and instruments used in astronomy became an important preoccupation in Prague, at times involving Rudolf. The emperor apparently designed a self-orienting chart for travelers, controlled by a concealed compass; see “German Prince Practitioners: Aspects in the Development of Courtly Science, Technology, and Procedures in the Renaissance,” Technology and Culture 22, no. 2 (1981): 255. Rudolf's enthusiasm for technology is also demonstrated by his request to borrow Brahe's odometer to have it copied. Brahe strategically brought it with him to his private audience with the emperor; see Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 236.

15 For Rudolf's interest in scientific instruments, see Antonín Švejda, “Science and Instruments,” in Rudolph II and Prague, ed. Eliška Fučíková et al. (Prague, 1997), 618–19; Joaneath Spicer, “Referencing Invention and Novelty in Art and Science at the Court of Rudolf II,” in “Novità” Neuheitskonzepte in den Bildkünsten um 1600, ed. U. Pfisterer and G. Wimböck (Zürich, 2011), 401–24.

16 Moran, “German Prince Practitioners,” 225. For the relevance of astronomy for the early modern court, see Paula Findlen, “The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Italy,” in Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750, ed. Bruce T. Moran (Woodridge, 1991), 5–24; Darin Hayton, “Expertise ex stellis: Comets, Horoscopes, and Politics in Renaissance Hungary,” Osiris 25, no. 1 (2010): 27–46.

17 Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 236. The two manuscripts include an ephemeris of daily positions of the sun and moon for the year 1599 and a catalog of 1,004 stars, called Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata (Introductory exercise toward a restored astronomy), published posthumously in Prague by Kepler in 1602. Brahe described his reception by Rudolf II in a letter to Holger Rosenkrantz; see Thoren, Lord of Uraniborg, 412–13.

18 According to Christianson, the initial copies of the Mechanica were bound in leather, with finer copies bound in vellum, and the most sumptuous ones bound in pale silk with metal clasps (On Tycho's Island, 224). The presentation copies of the Mechanica that remain in libraries today follow the same content and layout, although some lack the introductory portrait of Brahe, which faces the first page of the dedication. See B. Hasselberg, “Einige Bemerkungen über Tycho Brahes Astronomiae mechanica. Wandesbugi 1598,” Vierteljahrschrift Der Astronomischen Gessellschaft XXXIX (1904): 186–87. According to Hasselberg, only the finest copies of the Mechanica, intended for the most illustrious patrons, contained a painted portrait of Brahe. Some of these are contained in copies at the Strahov Monastery Library in Prague, at the Royal Library of Copenhagen, and at the Cathedral Library in Kolocsa. The other illuminated copies of the Mechanica contain a painted engraving of Brahe, produced by Jacques de Gheyn in 1586. See Adam Mosley et al., “Epistolary Culture, Editorial Practices, and the Propriety of Tycho's Astronomical Letters,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 34 (2003): 421–51.

19 In addition to the images of instruments, the Mechanica contains a dedication to Rudolf II, a scientific autobiography of Brahe's achievements, his future research plans, letters and poems written by his friends and acclaimed colleagues (who praise his achievements and his dedication to astronomy), and pictorial and textual descriptions of his palatial observatories on the island of Hven in Denmark. Rudolf also received two manuscripts.

20 In the preface, Brahe states, “The more that the honor and Majesty of the best and greatest God, which shines in celestial things more than in other aspects of this great world theater, comes to be known more correctly, the more it is increased and esteemed among the inhabitants of the earth; Moreover, since to preserve, protect, and promote for all posterity these so excellent things, which are almost extraordinary in human affairs, will not diminish Your Imperial Majesty's fame and reputation, may it shine brighter for that and endure as long as the sun and heavenly bodies last, because from these alone, which are perpetual inconstant—of a celestial kind—one may acquire an internal name and undiminished honor.” Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, 10.

21 Ibid., 4.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., 7.

24 See Kaufmann, “From Mastery of the World to Mastery of Nature,” 174–94; Beket Bukovinská, “The Known and Unknown Kunstkammer of Rudolf II,” in Collection, Laboratory, Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century, ed. H. Schramm, L. Schwarte, and J. Lazardzig (Berlin, 2005), 199–227; and Fučíková, “The Collections of Rudolf II in Prague,” 47–53.

25 See Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 224–25, for a discussion of some of the known recipients of the Mechanica.

26 For a discussion of how Brahe succeeded in capturing the attention of Rudolf II, see ibid., 226.

27 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994), 363; and Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge. For presentation treatises that were collected as precious items in the quest for knowledge, see Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London, 1996), 136–44. See also Pamela O. Long, “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanica Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age,” Isis 88, no. 1 (1997): 20.

28 Brahe, Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, 4.

29 The only exceptions are two prints of ruler instruments, which are oriented horizontally; because of the size of these prints, their vertical edges protrude into the frame, such as in Figure 12.

30 Referring to the suggested garden settings, Emma Perkins makes a similar observation in “Instruments of Authority,” asserting that the “carefully contextualized representations … serve to reinforce their physical reality” (263). A garden setting is indicated behind the Globus magnus orichalcicus. The fact that Tycho had this globe placed in his library, rather than under the open sky, suggests that depicting the great globe outdoors under a changing sky was not meant to suggest the reality of its setting.

31 Ibid. A green turf is also indicated in the Quadrans minor orichalcicus inauratus (see Figure 3), and the Quadrant maximus from Augsburg appears to occupy a garden setting. As noted by Perkins and Liba Taub, the idealized setting of the small quadrant is similar to how Andreas Vesalius portrayed his dissected humans in a naturalistic landscape. Emma Perkins and Liba Taub, “Perhaps Irrelevant: The Iconography of Tycho Brahe's Small Gilt Brass Quadrant,” Nuncius 30 (2015): 15–16.

32 In the latter case, we see instruments mounted on a large vertical tube attached to a circular base encircled by a series of steps. From the top of the circular steps, a wall appears to rise and then partially encapsulate the instrument below. Above the partial roof, a darkened sky is indicated. From Brahe's text we learn that these instruments were located in underground crypts at the observatory Stjærneborg; their purpose was to protect the larger instruments from the elements. The way they are articulated in the Mechanica allows the viewer access not only to the interior of the crypt that features the entire instrument but also to its exterior.

33 Thank you to Jole Shackelford for clarifying this in an earlier draft of this article.

34 See Susan Dackerman, Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts (University Park, 2002); Schmidt and Nichols, Altered and Adorned; and Dániel Margócsy, Mark Somos, and Stephen N. Joffe, The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Consensus, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions (Leiden, 2018), 13–24.

35 Brahe explains that they are metal clips, some of which represent points of the axis, but they are not specifically discussed in the text. Therefore, for the uninitiated viewer, their purpose is unclear.

36 For a discussion of its significance and the wider use of iconographic elements on Brahe's instruments, as discussed textually in the Mechanica, see Perkins and Taub, “Perhaps Irrelevant,” 9–36.

37 The same is true of the Semicirculus magnus azimuthalis and the Arcus bipartitus minoribus siderum distantiis inserviens (see Figure 4).

38 For instance, the figures standing in niches in the colorful base of the Armillae aequatoriae (see Figure 1).

39 The copy at Dresden has a mix of noncolored, red, and green frames.

40 Because the copies of the Mechanica had to be produced and illuminated quickly, it is perhaps not surprising that certain details suggest a hurried process. Perhaps these were then gifted to less illustrious individuals on the part of Brahe. Whether the choice of color and the quality of application tells us anything about the potential recipients of each copy is beyond the scope of this study.

41 For a discussion of illumination of images in the context of medical illustration, see Margócsy et al., The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius, 24; and Dackerman, Painted Prints.

42 According to Christianson, it was painted in 1587 by Hans van Steenwinckle, Hans Knieper, and Tobias Gemperlin (On Tycho's Island, 118).

43 This instrument was used by Brahe to note the longitude of one thousand stars. Thank you to Jole Shackelford for clarifying the use of this instrument.

44 The inscription reads: “Figure of Tycho Brahe, Otto's son, the builder of this building and of astronomical instruments. In the year 1587, at the age of forty years.” Brahe, Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, 34n64.

45 Ibid., 32.

46 Christianson, On Tycho's Island, 118.

47 Brahe adds that the king in return had given him a golden chain, “a magnificent work of art, of the kind which he was at the time wont to wear, beautifully worked and adorned with his own portrait.” Brahe, Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, 33.

48 For a discussion about the iconographic significance of the dog in the Quadrant muralis, see Gaulke, Karsten, “Perfect in Every Sense: Scientific Iconography on an Equation Clock by Jorst Burgi and the Self Understanding of the Astronomers at the Kassel Court in the Late 1580s,” Nuncius 30, no. 1 (2018): 63–65Google Scholar.

49 For Brahe and alchemy, see Shackelford, Jole, “Tycho Brahe, Laboratory Design, and the Aim of Science: Reading Plans in Context,” Isis 84, no. 2 (1993): 211–30Google Scholar; and Hannaway, Owen, “Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe,” Isis 77, no. 4 (1986): 584–610CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 As Jim Bennett notes, the Mechanica “established an influential precedent for ambitious observatory astronomers,” such as Johannes Hevelius, John Flamseed, and Ole Roemer; “Early Modern Mathematical Instruments,” Isis 102, no. 4 (2011): 700. See also Bennett, “Instruments and Illustrations in Eighteenth-Century Astronomy,” in Science and the Visual Image in the Enlightenment, ed. William R. Shea (Canton, 2000), 137–54.