Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Johannes Swammerdam, and Paolo Boccone: Visual Strategies and Communicating Science

Eric Jorink

Johannes Swammerdam, Drawing of a bee’s eye in Icones operis Bibliae naturae, c, 1677, fol. 31v. Ms BPH 126 B. Leiden University Library — Johannes Swammerdam, Drawing of a bee’s eye in *Icones operis Bibliae naturae*, c, 1677, fol. 31v. Ms BPH 126 B. Leiden University Library

Johannes Swammerdam, Drawing of a bee’s eye in *Icones operis Bibliae naturae*, c, 1677, fol. 31v. Ms BPH 126 B. Leiden University Library

The protagonists of this research project, Van Schrieck, Swammerdam, and Boccone, all worked in Amsterdam in the early 1670s, and all had ties with the Medici court in Tuscany. Challenged by the new Cartesian philosophy, they closely studied the structure and genesis of insects, plants, and fungi in great detail. Besides putting new theories to the test and using the new microscope, they also experimented with new visual strategies. Zooming in and out, time-lapsing, embalming, and exploring the borders of representation were just a few of the techniques they explored. As part of the larger “Visualizing the Unknown” project, I will explore the visual strategies that were employed simultaneously by these three men to understand better the novel ways in which science could be practiced with new seventeenth-century tools and techniques, while also taking note of how this practice was informed by philosophical and religious questions about the source of life itself – question with which these men grappled and struggled.