Image, Imagination, and Cognition

339 Pages·2018·8.96 MB·English

by  Christoph Lüthy et al.

Image, Imagination, and Cognition
Intersections
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
General Editor
Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de)
Editorial Board
W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)
W. de Boer (Miami University)
Chr. Göttler (University of Bern)
J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen)
W.S. Melion (Emory University)
R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
P.J. Smith (University of Leiden)
J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast)
A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
C. Zittel (University of Stuttgart)
C. Zwierlein (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)
VOLUME 55 – 2018
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte
Image, Imagination, and
Cognition
Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice
Edited by
Christoph Lüthy
Claudia Swan
Paul Bakker
Claus Zittel
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: “Studiosus Palestrites”, Anonymous, French Woodcut (19.2 × 12.1 cm), in: Carolus Bovillus,
Liber de sensibus, in: Que in hoc volumine continentur: Liber de intellectu. Liber de sensibus. Liber de generatione.
Libellus de nihilo. Ars oppositorum. Liber de sapiente. Liber de duodecim numeris. Philosophicae epistulae. Liber
de perfectis numeris. Libellus de mathematicis rosis. Liber de mathematicis corporibus. Libellus de mathematicis
supplementis (Paris: Henri Estienne, 1510), fol. 60v.
Image © Trustees of the British Museum
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1568-1181
isbn 978-90-04-36573-5 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-36574-2 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Notes on the Editors vii
Notes on the Contributors ix
List of Illustrations xiv
Introduction 1
Paul Bakker, Christoph Lüthy, and Claudia Swan
1 Imagination, Images, and (Im)Mortality 11
Sander W. De Boer
2 ‘Imaginatio’ and Visual Representation in Twelfth-Century Cosmology
and Astronomy: Ibn al-Haytham, Stephen of Pisa (and Antioch), (Ps.)
Māshāʾallāh, and (Ps.) Thābit ibn Qurra 32
Barbara Obrist
3 Minerva in the Forge of Vulcan: Ingegno, Fatica, and Imagination in
Early Florentine Art Theory 61
David Zagoury
4 Bernardino Telesio on Spirit, Sense, and Imagination 94
Leen Spruit
5 Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Imagination 117
Sergius Kodera
6 Imagination in the Chamber of Sleep: Karel van Mander on Somnus and
Morpheus 147
Christine Göttler
7 Agere Corporaliter: Otto Vaenius’s Theory of the Imagination 177
Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni, Aline Smeesters
8 Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Views on Mathematical
Imagination 208
Guy Claessens
vi Contents
9 What Does a Diagram Prove that Other Images Do Not? Images and
Imagination in the Kepler-Fludd Controversy 227
Christoph Lüthy
10 Aristotelian Proportioned Images and Descartes’s Dynamic
Imagining 275
Dennis L. Sepper
11 Schematism, Imagination, and Pure Intuition in Kant 300
Sybille Krämer
Index Nominum 321
Notes on the Editors
Paul J.J.M. Bakker
is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at Radboud University
(Nijmegen, The Netherlands). His research focuses on themes related to the
philosophy of mind such as the relations among soul, mind, and body; the
soul’s powers or ‘faculties’; knowledge and perception; the rise of psychology
as an independent scientific discipline. He mainly works on published and
unpublished commentaries on Aristotle’s book On the Soul (De anima) from
the late thirteenth to the late sixteenth century. He is also involved in a series
of editorial projects. Most recently, he has published (with Michiel Streijger)
the first two volumes of the critical edition of John Buridan’s questions com-
mentary on Aristotle’s Physics: John Buridan, Quaestiones super octo libros
Physicorum Aristotelis (secundum ultimam lecturam). Libri I–II (Leiden: 2015)
and Libri III–IV (Leiden: 2016). He is currently preparing the third and final
volume of this edition. He co-edits the book series Medieval and Early Modern
Philosophy and Science (Leiden: Brill) and is a member of the editorial board of
Vivarium (Leiden: Brill).
Christoph Lüthy
is Professor of the History of Philosophy and Science at Radboud University
(Nijmegen, The Netherlands). His research interests focus on three themes:
theories of matter from Antiquity to the modern age; strategies of visualiza-
tion in the science; and the status of mental categories in an evolutionary
framework. For the last twenty years, he has edited the journal Early Science
and Medicine. He also co-edits the book series Medieval and Early Modern
Philosophy and Science (Leiden: Brill). His latest book is David Gorlaeus (1591–
1612): An Enigmatic Figure in the History of Philosophy and Science (Amsterdam:
2012). His most recent articles retrace the evolution of the term ‘chance’ (with
Carla Rita Palmerino, 2016) and unmask William Rawley as the manufacturer
of Francis Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum (with Doina-Cristina Rusu, 2017).
Claudia Swan
is Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern University (Evanston,
Illinois, USA). She is the author of numerous publications on Dutch art and
science, practices and theories of the imagination, and Dutch visual culture and
trade in the global context, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary
Supplement. Swan has been a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced
viii Notes on the Editors
Study; the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte; CRASSH, Cam-
bridge University; and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Her
single-author books include Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern
Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (Cambridge: 2005) and “Rarities of these Lands”:
Encounters with the Exotic in Golden Age Holland (forthcoming). She is co-
editor (with Londa Schiebinger) of Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, Politics
(Philadelphia: 2004) and is editing volumes on Art & Nature and on Early
Modern Geometries. She was a founding director of Northwestern University’s
Program in the Study of Imagination, and hopes one day to complete a short
history of the imagination.
Claus Zittel
teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart
(Germany), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), and Olsztyn (Poland), and is
Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies. His Visiting
Professorships include Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), TU Darmstadt
(Germany), Beida University (Beijing, China), and the Universities of Padova,
Trieste, and Verona (Italy). He is inter alia the author of Das ästhetische Kalkül
von Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ (Würzburg: 2000, 2012) and
Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der
Wissenschaft (Berlin: 2009) and editor of Nietzsche-Studien. He has co-edited
some thirty-one volumes, including (with Thomas Rahn and Wolfgang Neuber)
The Making of Copernicus. Transformations of a Scientist and His Science (Leiden;
Boston: 2014); (with Karl Enenkel) Die ‘Vita’ als Vermittlerin von Wissenschaft und
Werk (Berlin: 2013); (with Michael Thimann and Heiko Damm) of The Artist as
Reader (Leiden: 2013); (with Helen King and Manfred Horstmannshoff) Blood,
Sweat and Tears. The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early
Modern Europe (Leiden: 2012); (with Sylwia Werner) Ludwik Fleck. Denkstile
und Tatsachen (Berlin: 2011); (with Moritz Epple) Science as Cultural Practice
Vol. 1: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the
Age of Extremes (Berlin: 2010); (with Gisela Engel and Romano Nanni)
Philosophies of Technology. Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries (Leiden;
Boston: 2008); and (with Wolfgang Detel) Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in
Early Modern Europe (Berlin: 2002).
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 phi-
losophy 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 post-
doctoral researcher at the De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and
Renaissance Philosophy at the University of Leuven.
Sander de Boer
obtained his PhD in philosophy in 2011 at Radboud University (Nijmegen);
his dissertation is on Soul and Body in the Middle Ages: A Study of the
Transformations of the ‘scientia de anima’ c.1260–c.1360. He is co-editor, with
Paul Bakker and Cees Leijenhorst, of Psychology and the Other Sciences: A Case
of Cross-Disciplinary Interaction 1250–1750 (Leiden: 2012). He is currently a post-
doctoral researcher at the University of Groningen (Faculty of Philosophy),
where he continues to work mainly on the history of philosophical psychology.
Ralph Dekoninck
is Professor of Art History at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium)
and a co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA).
His research focuses on early modern image theories and practices, specifically
in their relation to Jesuit spirituality; Baroque festival culture; and art in sev-
enteenth-century Antwerp, especially engraving. His publications include Ad
Imaginem. Statuts, fonctions et usages de l’image dans la littérature spirituelle
jésuite du XVIIe siècle (Geneva: 2005) and La vision incarnante et l’image in-
carnée. Santi di Tito et Caravage (Paris: 2016). He is also editor or co-editor
of Relations artistiques entre l’Italie et les anciens Pays-Bas (16e–17e siècles)
(Turnhout: 2012); (with Myriam Watthee-Delmotte) L’idole dans l’imaginaire
occidental (Paris: 2005); (with Agnès Guiderdoni) Emblemata sacra. The Rhetoric
and Hermeneutics of Illustrated Sacred Discourse (Turnhout: 2007); (with Agnès
Guiderdoni and Nathalie Kremer) Aux limites de l’imitation. L’ut pictura poesis à
l’épreuve de la matière (Amsterdam: 2009); (with Agnès Guiderdoni and Walter
Melion) Ut pictura meditatio. The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500–1700
(Turnhout: 2012); (with Agnès Guiderdoni and Emilie Granjon) Fiction sacrée.
Spiritualité et esthétique durant le premier âge moderne (Leuven: 2013); (with
x Notes on the Contributors
Michel Lefftz and Caroline Heering) Questions d’ornement (XVe–XVIIIe siècles)
(Turnhout: 2014); and (with Brigitte d’Hainaut-Zveny) Machinae spirituales. Les
retables baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et en Europe (Brussels: 2014).
Christine Göttler
is Professor emerita of Art History at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte,
Universität Bern (Switzerland). Her research interests concern collecting prac-
tices, the interactions between various arts (including the so-called alchemical
arts), and the visual and spatial imagery of interiority and the imagination. She
has published widely on diverse topics ranging from Reformation iconoclasm,
post-Tridentine spirituality, and the relationship between art, nature, and the
senses, to historical aspects of early modern artists’ materials (wax, copper,
papier-mâché). Her most recent books include Last Things: Art and the
Religious Imagination in the Age of Reform (Turnhout: 2010); (with Sven
Dupré), Knowledge and Discernment in the Early Modern Arts (London – New
York: 2017); (with Mia M. Mochizuki), The Nomadic Object: The Challenge
of World for Early Modern Religious Art (Leiden: 2017); and (with Karl A.E.
Enenkel), Solitudo: Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Cultures. She is currently preparing a monograph on Hendrick
Goltzius’s Allegory of the Arts (1611) in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Agnès Guiderdoni
is a Senior Research Associate at the Fonds National de la Recherche
Scientifique (Belgium) and Professor of Early Modern Literature at the
Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where she is a co-director of
the Centre for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA). A scholar of seven-
teenth-century French literature, she specializes in emblematic literature and
the field of figurative representations (imago figurata). She has published many
articles on these topics, as well as on theoretical aspects of text-image rela-
tions. Among her publications are the co-edited volumes (with Walter Melion
and Ralph. Dekoninck) Ut pictura meditatio. The Meditative Image in Northern
Art, 1500–1700 (Leiden: 2012) and (with Ralph Dekoninck and Emilie Granjon),
Fiction sacrée. Spiritualité et esthétique durant le premier âge moderne (Leuven:
2013). A monograph on emblemata and spirituality is in progress.
Sergius Kodera
is Dean of the Faculty of Design at New Design University, St. Pölten (Austria).
Since receiving his doctorate in 1994, he has also taught Renaissance philoso-
phy at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna. His primary
fields of interest are the history of the body and sexuality, magic, and media.