Discuss the relation between art, science and maths in the Renaissance — UCL History of Science (2016)
The relationship between ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘maths’ in the ‘Renaissance’ (1450–1630) is traditionally regarded as being explicitly interconnected and far less categorically distinct by modern standards. In this essay, I aim to explore firstly, in what ways all three disciplines overlapped and synthesised to achieve the novel desire that ‘Renaissance artists’ had for a more accurate and geometric representation of the natural world. Secondly, I will examine the scepticism and in some cases the outright rejection of the ‘Ancients’ and their models by ‘Renaissance artists’ and how this complemented the interconnectedness of these disciplines. Finally, I will explore the ways in which these three disciplines came into conflict by virtue of their philosophical and epistemic aims together with the obstacles that university studies presented to Renaissance scholars.
Firstly, it is worth noting that there exist several definitions of the ‘Renaissance’ and when it happened. For the purposes of this essay, I will define the ‘Renaissance’ as the ‘rebirth of knowledge’ and ‘development of new science’ (Debus, 1978) and I have chosen to focus my essay on the years between 1453–1630 since it is generally held that it was at this stage that ‘Renaissance artists’ began to cross the frontiers of ancient thought (Hall, 2013). Furthermore, I will define ‘humanism’ as the intellectual movement characterised in ‘scholarship by attentiveness to classical Latin (and later Greek), in neo-Latin and vernacular literature by the creative imitation of ancient texts’ (“humanism”, 2016), of which ‘humanists’ or ‘Renaissance artists’ were a part.
Secondly, the contemporary definitions of ‘art’ and ‘science’ demonstrate that these disciplines were not distinctly different in that they both sought to shed light on natural laws. At the time, the term ‘science’ took several ‘linguistic forms’ (Dixon, 1986) and only acquired its present meaning in the seventeenth century (Wightman, 1972). Additionally, it was widely accepted that ‘science’ was concerned with the ‘investigation of nature through observational evidence’ (Debus, 1978), which is akin to what some humanists thought about ‘art’. The English Romantic painter, John Constable, argued that ‘painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature’ (Young, 1996), which supports the notion that ‘science’ and ‘art’ were both concerned with interpreting the natural world using ‘maths’ and sought to derive laws and theories about nature. In addition, ‘maths’ and to some extent ‘technology’ was becoming increasingly relied upon as a tool by artists in order to represent the world ‘accurately’ using geometric proportions and was considered an essential requisite for an artist, which is supported by Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) assertion that ‘no painter can paint well without a thorough knowledge of geometry’ (Butterfield, 1965). In other words, Renaissance artists like da Vinci, whose work on human proportions in ‘The Vitruvian Man’ was vital to the study of human anatomy, applied ‘mathematical’ and ‘scientific’ principles in order to further their artistic aims of representing the world geometrically.
The view that Renaissance artists sought to apply ‘mathematical’ and ‘scientific’ principles to their ‘art’ and that developments in ‘art’ also furthered ‘scientific’ thinking is evidenced by the discovery of linear perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), a founding father of the Renaissance, in early fifteenth-century, and the fact that Galileo’s experiments on acceleration and his analysis of projectile motion were developed two centuries later as a result of his training in perspective drawing (Edgerton, 2016). Up until Brunelleschi’s discovery of perspective, mechanical apparatuses were hardly constructed from scale plans and illustrations were non-perspective (Edgerton, 2016), but with the advent of Brunelleschi’s linear perspective, which applied geometric rules of optical mirror reflection, models became more accurate. Furthermore, it can be argued that Galileo would not have been able to accurately interpret and illustrate his findings when making his observations of the moon through his newly invented optical telescope, then called the ‘perspective tube’ (Edgerton, 2016), thus making Brunelleschi discovery of linear perspective, albeit an artistic event, vital for ‘scientific’ progress.
Additionally, the study of anatomy at the time contains further evidence of how the synthesis between ‘art’ and ‘science’ brought about progress in what was and still is a traditionally ‘scientific’ field of study. Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), who is regarded as the founder of modern human anatomy, set the new trend of improving upon the description of the human body in 1543 with De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Butterfield, 1965). Furthermore, Vesalius is said to have ‘combined the power of the artist with the skill of the scientist’ (Butterfield, 1965) in that he sought to provide more accurate and detailed visual illustrations of the structure of the human body, which was necessary for the advancement of anatomic study since, like models for mechanical apparatuses prior to Brunelleschi’s discovery of linear perspective, illustrations of the human anatomy were mostly inaccurate and until Vesalius’ contributions, this did not alter typically due to the reverence that was held towards the ‘Ancients’ and a compulsion to demonstrate the infallibility of Galen’s views (Debus, 1978). Even Vesalius admits to having been a fervent proponent of Galen’s ideas before deciding to debunk his views in favour of observational evidence and a more ‘scientific approach’:
“Not long ago I would not have dared diverge a hair’s breadth from Galen’s opinion. But the septum is as thick, dense, and compact as the rest of the heart.” (Moore, 2003)
So not only did ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘maths’ synthesise to improve the accuracy of visual depictions of the human anatomy and thus further what is traditionally regarded as a ‘scientific’ pursuit but this synthesis only took place as a result of the critical tone with which the humanists adopted towards the ‘Ancients’.
Scepticism and to a lesser extent the outright rejection of ‘Ancient’ authority had important implications towards bridging connections between ‘art’, ‘maths’ and ‘science’, which led to discoveries of novel models in the place of classical models. Firstly, it is clear that Renaissance artists had a new vision or ‘naissance’ of painting and ‘art’: Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), for example, expressed that the fame of Renaissance artists ‘ought to be greater’ than that of the ‘Ancients’ only ‘if [they] discover unheard-of and never-before-seen arts and sciences, without teachers or without any model whatsoever’ (Wightman, 1972). Here, we can see that Alberti along with other humanists sought to liberate himself from ‘Ancient’ thought by discovering unprecedented truths about nature and was optimistic about what could be achieved through the combination of the ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’. Additionally, it is unlikely that Alberti thought that revolutionary intellectual progress could take place without the combined efforts of both the ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’ (including ‘maths’) otherwise he would have easily omitted one or the other from his statement altogether. Further illustration of how the tradition of ‘art’ was to be synthesised with the ‘sciences’ in order to surpass the ‘Ancients’ is illustrated by the works of Masaccio (1401–1428). Masaccio’s ‘realistic narrative frescoes in the church of the Carmine’ and employment of linear perspective and the vanishing point are held up as ‘the most striking single break in the tradition of painting’ (Butterfield, 1965) because whereas in antiquity ‘maths’ was not treated as being vital to the investigation and depiction of the natural world, Masaccio’s revolutionary art made ample use of ‘maths’ since the new criterion of art ‘lied within its realism’ (Singleton,1968). Conversely, it is also agreed that many Renaissance artists did not completely dispel classical models, which is the attitude traditionally regarded as being held in the succeeding era of the Scientific Revolution.
The fact is many Renaissance artists incorporated classical models into their work. For example, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), who attacked scholasticism, that is, the fervent adherence to the Christian and Aristotelian ideologies (“scholasticism”, 2016), is said to have ‘admired equally Aristotle the literary critic and Aristotle the biologist, while attacking Aristotle the cosmologer and semantic philosopher’ (Hall, 2013), and even Masaccio’s works were influenced by Greek and Roman art originating from his trip to Rome in 1425 (Hartt, 1959). Both examples suggest that despite attempts to break away from classical models and thus form new connections between the three disciplines, Renaissance scholars still sought to imitate the ‘Ancients’ by engaging in the same subject matters, which supports the notion that dedication to the ‘Ancients’ was a ‘familiar characteristic of Renaissance humanism’ (Debus, 1978). Reasons for this dedication to the ‘Ancients’ can be traced back to the scholastic regime of university learning.
Some historians argue that university studies stunted intellectual growth given their emphasis on particular subjects. The humanist and teacher, Vittorino de Feltre (1378–1446), explains that:
“Students were urged to excel at sports and to learn military exercises […] studied rhetoric, music, geography, and history […] taking their examples from the ancients […] taught to value both moral principles and political action above the basic principles of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) or the study of traditional philosophical and scientific subjects” (Debus, 1978)
It is evident here that even though there was a shift in attitude towards the ‘Ancients’, emphasis on ‘literature, history and moral philosophy’ as opposed to the ‘scientific’ and ‘mathematical’ subjects meant that the synthesis and interrelatedness that we find occurring in some of the important works aforementioned were solely limited to the Renaissance scholars who were willing to combine a reverence and mastery for Greek texts with a ‘desire for novelty’ (Hall, 2013) and it was only then that significant intellectual progress was made.
Much like the ‘Ancients’, Renaissance artists took a keen interest in the occult, and there are obvious similarities between ‘art’ and ‘magic’ in that they are both allusive and concerned with spirituality and mysticism. I will go as far as asserting that in the eyes of the Renaissance artists, ‘magic’ would have been considered an extended form of ‘art’ given that even in Renaissance terms it makes use of spectacular visual displays that seem to defy nature in order to deliberately shock or amaze an audience much like a painting will inspire awe or evoke some feeling within an onlooker through the employment of some form of visual and often uncanny aesthetic. In light of this, my discussion of ‘magic’ is, therefore, no less pertinent than my discussion of the more traditional forms of ‘art’ like painting and sculpture and their mutual relatedness to ‘maths’ and ‘science’. In the first place, a number of Renaissance scholars had hoped to use ‘maths’ to uncover mystical truths of nature and divinity, which, especially by contemporary standards, would be consigned exclusively to the realm of ‘art’ and perhaps to a greater extent ‘magic’, which was closely associated with religion and sought to ‘unify’ nature and religion in its search for divine truths (Debus, 1978).
In addition, during this period there was a revival of interest in the Platonic, neo-Platonic, and Hermetic writings, all of whom had occult influences and the Renaissance cabalistic studies encouraged a ‘mystical numerological investigation’ of biblical texts in the hope that fundamental truths would be discovered (Debus, 1978). Robert Fludd (1574–1637), who had both scientific and occult interests, believed ‘maths’ would fathom ‘the divine harmonies of nature through the interrelationship of circles, triangles, squares’ (Debus, 1978), which supports the claim that both ‘magic’ and ‘maths’ were working hand in hand in order to uncover mystical truths whilst undermining the idea that ‘maths’ was strictly concerned with the physical world and non-spiritual matters. Interestingly, though, Fludd also thought that ‘maths’ should be concerned with the ‘overall design’ of the universe and not ‘lesser phenomena’ like Galileo’s laws of motion (Debus, 1978), which would suggest that in the view of Fludd ‘maths’ was in fact only of relevance and utility when it concerned itself with transcendental and spiritual phenomena such as the fundamental makeup of the universe, which is both testament to how heavily influenced Renaissance scholars were by Christian authority in that they placed theological questions at the top of their hierarchy of learning as well as suggests that ‘maths’ was viewed as a subordinate tool that would help further religious aims as opposed to being a dominant and entirely separate pursuit of knowledge.
Whether ‘maths’ actually did offer insight into mystical truths is a separate issue, but it is nonetheless clear that Renaissance artists sought to attain a more refined understanding of the structure of space as well as to discover some of the ‘secrets’ of nature in light of neo-Platonistic and Christian ideals. Furthermore, it is clear that ‘maths’, ‘art’, ‘science’ alongside ‘magic’ all had an important part to play in ascertaining this goal and one might argue that ‘magic’ and ‘art’ preceded ‘maths’ and ‘science’ in this endeavour given that it was predominantly Renaissance artists who were committing these feats and were doing so with religious aims in mind.
So far, I have explored and argued for how ‘art’, ‘maths’ and ‘science’ interconnected and synthesised to form a more accurate representation of the natural world during the Renaissance, but there is also the argument that even during this period, these three disciplines could be divided up in accordance with their epistemic underpinnings. The science historian, Dr. Marie Boas Hall, asserted that mathematicians at the time sought to ‘perfect a representational technique’, which was of great importance to production engineering, especially aerodynamic) rather than the ‘visual objectification of nature’ (Dixon, 1986). Also, Hall claims that as ‘geometric insight increased’ ‘artistic inspiration waned’. In this view, rather than ‘maths’ informing ‘art’ as a discipline by making artistic works more geometric, it, in fact, presented itself as a dominant discipline with more to offer in the investigation of the natural world; this line of reasoning, however, depends entirely on your definition of ‘art’ and whether you believe that ‘artistic inspiration’ is solely characterised by intangible and abstract properties of which ‘maths’ is the antithesis or whether you believe that ‘art’ can be both ‘mathematical’ and ‘scientific’ whilst offering a creative or abstract interpretation of reality (Lagemaat, 2011). I would argue that to Renaissance artists, ‘art’ is not to be treated with such impracticality and that it was only during the rise of mechanisation in the Scientific Revolution that the view of ‘art’ as being frivolous in comparison to ‘maths’ and ‘science’ became widespread.
In conclusion, it is clear that the relationship between ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘maths’ was primarily one of mutual comprehension. By examining the works and comments of multiple Renaissance artists, it is clear that these three disciplines overlapped and synthesised to help bring the humanists’ new vision of a geometric natural world into fruition. Furthermore, this new vision was evidently catalysed by the skepticism that humanists’ had towards the ‘Ancients’ despite their preservation of deep-seated beliefs in the occult and mystic truths. It is also clear that whilst ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘maths’ were not given equal status in higher education due to universities’ adherence to scholasticism, the obstacles that university studies presented to Renaissance scholars was not necessarily felt by those in question as they were only beginning to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the Greek outlook using a novel combination of all three.
Word count: 2,499
References
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- Debus, A. (1978). Man and nature in the Renaissance (1st ed., pp. 1–15). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Dixon, L. (1986). Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance Et Réforme, 10(4), new series / nouvelle série, 386–388. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43444612
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- Hall, M. (2013). Scientific Renaissance 1450–1630 (1st ed.). Dover Publications.
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- Lagemaat, R. (2011). Theory of knowledge for the IB diploma (1st ed., Ch. 11). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Moore, P. (2003). Blood and justice (1st ed.). Chichester: Wiley.
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- Singleton, C. S. (1968). Art, science, and history in the Renaissance (Vol. 3). Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Wightman, W. (1972). Science in a Renaissance society (1st ed., pp. Ch. 1 & 3). London: Hutchinson.
- Young, J. (1996). Inquiry in the Arts and Sciences. Philosophy, 71(276), 255–273. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3751183
