Nature: Science? Art? or Culture?

The interest on animals and natural creatures of people of Renaissance period in European continent was by far the most enthusiastic.  The phenomena can be well exemplified by a comprehensive book of animals and other natural creatures by Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) in his Historia Animmalium. Gesner was a Swiss Renaissance humanist and a natural historian who conducted studies of nature in depth. Gesner composed four volumes of the Historia Animallium during his lifetime on quadrupeds, amphibians, birds, fish.  An additional volume on serpents was added after his death. Gesner described this treatise as an encyclopedia of written and visual knowledge about the animal kingdom.  Organized in alphabetical order, the book allows its reader to find any information they need about specific animals and creatures. The book is thought to be the very first comprehensive zoological study of its kind. 

As an encyclopedia, Historia Animallium contains copious images of animals and yet, the purpose and the function of the images are hard to categorize under one theme. Even though the book itself functions as an encyclopedia and contains lots of medicinal information, it was not the only thing what Gesner wanted readers to focus on, for in some of the images, animals are not shown as objects for scientific observation. Animals such as a camel, lynx, and hyena are represented in specific contexts for better understanding of those animals. Camels are depicted together with man to show the animal’s characteristics and behavior in relation to human beings, while images of the lynx and hyena show their relationship to another animals and was pursuing the notion that images can deliver knowledge to their readers, and say something what can not be said by mere textual description.  By contextualizing the images within what is written in the book, it is possible to get a step closer to the role and function of those images, whether cultural, religious, or scientific. 

A century later, an English cleric Edward Topsell published a book History of Four-footed Beasts (1658) in English based on Gesner’s Historia Animallium, which made the work accessible to an English audience. Translated into several different languages, Gesner’s book Historia Animallium had considerable effect on later scholars of natural history, science, medicine, and art. At the same time, the book is a reflection of Gesner’s study on other scholars and humanist such as Pliny and Erasmus.  This exhibition explores Gesner’s countless knowledge on four-footed beasts as communicated through Topsell’s English translation to question whether nature is art, science or culture, or all of them.