From Magic to Mechanics: Automata at Sixteenth-Century Pratolino

In the realization of moving automata for Francesco I de' Medici's sixteenth-century Villa Pratolino outside of Florence, the memory of antiquity informed both the practical and theoretical operations of these " living statues. " The 1587 description of the villa and its wonders, Delle Maravigliose Opere di Pratolino, & d'Amore by Francesco de' Vieri, associates magical traditions of statue animation with Renaissance automata in a passage that cites Aristotle's description, rooted in atomism and sympathetic magic, of the physical process by which Daedalus animated his legendary wooden Venus. From the fifteenth century onwards, the rediscovery and popularity of Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophical texts in the Renaissance perpetuated Greco-Egyptian methods of investing man-made vessels, typically cult statues, with some kind of " life " from received celestial influences, thus manufacturing the " living gods " of antiquity. Simultaneously , mechanical texts which preserved mechanical devices and principles from ancient Alexandria were being assimilated to the engineering repertoire of Western Europe, and air and water were harnessed to impart movement to the early modern automata which graced Italian Renaissance hydraulic villas and gardens. For the court of Francesco I de' Medici, the division between our modern scientific concept of air and a metaphysical " spirit " was not yet drawn, and manipulating this occult " influence " was invested with a mastery of a far broader, unseen sphere. For the court philosopher De' Vieri, Neoplatonic and Hermetic writings furnished alternative and not necessarily contradictory understandings of various hidden forces which could cause statues to move. In the late sixteenth century, a much broader conception of " nature " allowed for the confirmation of invisible or " occult " phenomena which did not preclude the magical philosophy of antiquity from being related to the empirical discoveries being made via the production of new mechanical devices. De' Vieri's 1587 panegyric to Pratolino demonstrates that the mastery of mechanical as well as esoteric magical philosophy came to feature in the propaganda of the newly-invested Medici Grand Duke.

2018

The article considers a broad range of eighteenth-century art and culture phenomena that were responsible for the birth of Frankenstein, the great romantic monster. These include popular optical effects, such as the “magic lantern” and phantasmagoria, that filled the enlightened public with awe by the visual demonstration of spirits and the “resurrection of the dead”; galvanism and anatomical experiments in bringing the dead back to life with the help of electricity; enthusiastic invention of moving automatons that imitated the behavior and skills of living creatures and, last but not least, androids as the direct prototypes of the future monster. Shifting gradually from the outposts of scientific experiment to the sphere of entertainment culture, all these phenomena happened to be immediately related to the mythology of creating the ideal human being that, at the will of its creator – the scholarly magus – turned out to be the first monster in culture history. Keywords—automata; Fr...

Intellectual History Review

Since Aristotle, it has been common to understand wonder as a psychological state characterized by an absence of rational understanding. Drawing on this idea, a number of historians have suggested that the wonder which had long characterized the experience of automata, declined in the early modern period alongside the increased availability of theoretical treatises on mechanics. This article seeks to challenge this view by examining the relationship between rational and practical modes of technical understanding in John Wilkins’ Mathematicall Magick (1648). My aim is to show that a close reading of the second book of the Mathematicall Magick reveals an alternative conception of wonder as an experience of skilled workmanship that both tolerates theoretical understanding and is increased through practical experience. It will be my claim that the conception of technical wonder which emerges from Wilkin’s descriptions of automata, reveals how the concept of Aristotelian wonder is too reductive to capture the variety of ways in which mechanical technology was experienced in early modern England.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2019

L’Arte del Dono: Scambi artistici e diplomazia tra Italia e Spagna, 1550-1650, ed. by M. von Bernstorff and S. Kubersky-Piredda , 2013

Society and Politics, 2020

When Henry VIII split England from the Church of Rome, a dramatic aspect of the broad campaign of reform and iconoclasm was the exposure of fraudulent religious imagery, revealing to the public that the revered, "miraculous" statues which seemed to come alive were in fact mere mechanical devices operated by an unseen priest. This paper views the exile of medieval mechanical, moving sculpture from religious spaces and their appearance at court soon after, re-tooled during the Renaissance as classically-derived hydraulic and pneumatic automata, as an as-yet unremarked upon aspect reflective of the transfer of power from Church to State in early modern England. Tudor and Stuart royals as well as a handful of sophisticated men in their orbits constructed gardens, grottoes, and theatres wherein awe-inspiring tableaux of the inanimate "brought to life" could be enjoyed by a privileged few. As the Anglican Church coalesced with the king, rather than the pope, at its head, so too did some of its mysteries and power transfer to the crown. Introduction: "Forged Miracles" for the Reformation; Garden Delights for the Renaissance When Henry VIII split England from the Church of Rome, one aspect of the broad campaign of reform and iconoclasm 1 was the exposure of fraudulent religious imagery, revealing to the public that the revered and "miraculous" moving statues were in fact mere mechanical devices operated by an unseen priest. 2 These and other "forged miracles" were theological lightning rods for the English Reformation"s religious and political thunder, 3 and their exposure broke their enchantment upon the faithful. On the heels of their exile from religious spaces, similar devices appeared at court, re-tooled during the Renaissance as classically-derived hydraulic and pneumatic automata which had proliferated in Italian, French, German, and Dutch contexts in

ΣΧΟΛΗ. Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, 2020

In this article, I argue that Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas read a certain passage of Aristotle's Metaphysics on the nature of metaphysical curiosity in a way that is inconsistent with the earlier reading of the same passage by Alexander of Aphrodisias. The passage has to do with Aristotle's use of mechanical automata as a metaphor for kinetic mimesis in his metaphysics. The result of the variant reading of the passage in question is that these Scholastic readings emphasize universal causality as a vehicle of “wonder banishment” in metaphysics at the expense of recognizing the key metaphysical principle that Aristotle is suggesting. Such readings actually turn out to be difficult to maintain with the example of mechanical automata that Aristotle employs. I argue that the absence of the availability of Alexander's commentary to Albert and Aquinas contributes to their variant and inconsistent reading. There are three main parts and a conclusion. Part I discusses the p...

In 1515, a now-mythical beast appeared before François I, on the occasion of his royal entry to Lyon. A mechanical lion, made by Leonardo da Vinci, and embodying the heraldic figure of both Lyon and Florence, 'walked' a few steps, before its chest opened, revealing it to be full of lilies: fleurs-de-lys, the floral emblem of French royalty.1 This spectacular feat of ingenuity, a marvel of engineering and flattering artistry, would seem the ultimate pièce de circonstance, its uniquely rich significance the ephemeral product of the particular occasion (and place) for which it was designed. But the enduring fascination provoked by this 'robotlion'-whose reconstruction has been attempted in recent times-, dates back even further, the machine having originally been built by Leonardo for the entry of Louis XII into Milan, in 1509.2 The spectacular appearance by the Lyonnais mechanical lion, then, is already a copy (or a repurposing) of a copy; in its remarkable performance of biomimetic techne and its status as a 'recycled' device (not unlike, then, the emblematic 'devises' and other woodcuts that began to circulate across texts and contexts in the same period), it stands as a symbol both of the iterative nature of inventive processes and, more specifically, of the (re)production of festival culture.

Metascience, 2012