The Union of Art and Science in the Renaissance

One of the unique characteristics of the Renaissance was its integrative aspect. Unlike the boundaries between disciplines and activities, as say between the arts and the sciences, that were to be imposed strictly in later periods of history, the activities of women and men of the Renaissance frequently overlapped, or were absorbed into the same project. Artists like Leonardo and Michaelangelo performed dissections on human bodies and were superb anatomists. Interest in mathematics meant that mathematical perspectives became possible in works by artists such as Brunelleschi, Masolino and Masaccio. In their paintings, two dimensional spaces are rendered as three through mathematically precise positioning of planes and angles. Similarly, the world of science was informed by the Aristotelian idea that understanding the natural world required systematic observation, experience and the careful study of nature. Discovery in the Aristotelian view ultimately meant the uncovering of precise mathematical structures beneath the appearence of physical events and phenomena.

The Trinity by Masaccio
1425
The Annunciation by Masolino
circa 1425

No where is this sensibilty more clearly expressed than in Raphael's painting of The School of Athens. In this painting, the key mathematicians and philsophers are represented--Pythagoras, Euclid, Plato and Aristotle are portrayed with the symbols of their work, while the Renaissance artist and sculptor Michaelangelo works a little apart from the central characters. Raphael's sysmbolism is obvious:the Renaissance artist, he appears to say in this painting, is deeply rooted in the mathematical and philsophical heritage of Classical Greece and the boundaries between scholarship, art, science, mathematics are inextricably intertwined.

The revival of interest in works from Ancient Greece, and particularly the views of Plato and his notions of transcendence, and the mathematical precision of the universe, challenged both the physical and intellectual limitations of explorers, scientists and artists. The exploration of new worlds such as the voyage of Columbus, and the exploration of the heavens, the study of motion and optics triggered the development of instruments of exploration such as the globe, compasses, the quadrant, the torquetum, the sexton and the telescope. Artists who were also interested in science, mathematics and global exploration were quick to incorporate these instruments into their paintings.

Galileo's own drawings of his telescope in the Siderius Nuncius of 1610 are reproduced, for example, in Cigoli's Assumption of the Virgin. In Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors the painting is of two distinguished young men, the twenty-nine year old Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador to England, and the twenty-five year old Georges de Selve who had just been made a bishop. Both men stand amidst the accoutrements of science, mathematics, music, astronomy and world exploration which visually proclaim their mastery of these subjects.

Globe
Galileo's Telescope

The Renaissance world was thus one where different fields of scholarship and artistic enterprises mutually informed each other. Even God was in a sense a mathematician who, at least in the Renaissance view, created the universe in accordance to mathematical principles.

In Riccioli's painting, God's hand is seen in the act of creation. The words numerus number, pondus weight and mensura measure may be seen extending from his fingers to as he energizes the physical world with life.

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