Mathematics and Material Culture in Late Renaissance Italy

我的研究项目的主要目的是研究文化和智力生活的两个关键方面（数学和物质文化）在意大利文艺复兴后期塑造和回应知识、社会和视觉艺术的方式。特别是，我试图展示这些领域之间的相互作用如何促进了被称为科学革命的知识的重大变化。这一探索的载体是乌尔比诺的建筑工程师穆蒂奥·奥迪（1569-1639）。虽然今天基本上不为人所知，但在他的一生中，Oddi作为与数学相关的广泛学科的学者和实践者而受到高度尊重。他的职业生涯丰富多彩（从乌尔比诺到威尼斯、洛雷托、米兰和卢卡流亡），包括民用和军用建筑、数学仪器的设计和零售、绘画和虚拟物品的交易、写作、出版和教学。因此，他是那个时期普遍存在的博学的“工匠学者”的典型代表。虽然这类人物被广泛认为对文艺复兴后期的艺术和科学产生了重大影响，但他们的活动范围太广，而且缺乏幸存的证据，这阻碍了人们正确解释他们的贡献。我的书试图克服这些障碍，通过提供一个详细的描述Oddi和他的圈子的基础上广泛的（和很大程度上未经研究的）档案文件。Oddi的论文（包括笔记本、财务账目、论文、图纸和1000多封信件）为16世纪末和17世纪初的科学、艺术、商业和社会研究提供了非常丰富的资源。对这些文件的仔细研究表明，奥迪与著名的知识分子、艺术、政治和宗教人物有密切的关系，比如伽利略·伽利莱、扬·勃鲁盖尔、费德里科·巴罗奇、弗朗西斯科·玛丽亚二世·德拉·罗维里和费德里科·博罗梅奥。对Oddi的论文和印刷作品的仔细研究为以下方面提供了宝贵的新见解：数学和艺术教育、印刷书籍的生产和目的、数学工具的贸易、佛兰德橱柜绘画的内容和背景、图纸的收集和使用、军事建筑的复杂性，以及友谊和地区认同对贸易和知识生活的影响。本书的主要目标之一是研究数学和物质文化影响文艺复兴后期科学文化的方式。奥迪与伽利略几乎是同时代的人，他的生活和作品为形成时代的科学实践提供了新的视角，尤其是数学在自然研究中的应用越来越多，以及世纪之交视觉艺术与科学之间的大量交叉授粉。然而，尽管奥迪的职业生涯与他更知名的同行有着惊人的相似之处，但奥迪的兴趣和历史价值很大程度上在于，与伽利略不同，他没有引人注目的创新，也没有成为“现代科学的英雄”。因此，他可以说是那个时期活跃的大多数日常科学实践者的更好代表，特别是那些积极传播数学知识的人，他们通过建立数学“共享知识”为科学革命奠定了基础。通过对奥迪、伽利略和他们的同行的比较，这本书试图建立文艺复兴后期数学科学的一般和特殊之处，一方面区分了普遍的态度，另一方面区分了当地或个人的方法和实践。“意大利文艺复兴后期的数学和物质文化”将展示这一时期的科学变革是多方面的和有争议的，不仅根植于思想，也根植于物质，受友谊和原则的支配，受地点和目的的决定。

The main aim of my research project is to examine the ways in which two key aspects of cultural and intellectual life (mathematics and material culture) shaped and responded to knowledge, society, and the visual arts in late Renaissance Italy. In particular, I seek to show how interactions between these fields facilitated the substantial changes in knowledge known as the Scientific Revolution. The vehicle for this exploration is the architect-engineer Mutio Oddi of Urbino (1569-1639). Although largely unknown today, during his lifetime Oddi was esteemed highly as a scholar and practitioner of a wide range of disciplines related to mathematics. His diverse and peripatetic career (which took him from Urbino to exile in Venice, Loreto, Milan, and Lucca) embraced civil and military architecture, the design and retail of mathematical instruments, trading in pictures and objects of virtu, writing, publishing, and teaching. As such, he is a prime example of the polymathic 'artisan-scholar' so prevalent in the period. While this type of figure is widely recognised as having significantly influenced late Renaissance art and science, the range of their activities and a lack of surviving evidence has hampered efforts to properly explain their contribution. My book seeks to overcome these obstacles by providing a detailed account of Oddi and his circle based on an extensive (and largely unstudied) set of archival documents. Oddi's papers (including notebooks, financial accounts, treatises, drawings, and more than 1000 letters) comprise a remarkably rich source for the study of science, art, commerce, and society in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Scrutiny of these documents reveals Oddi's involved relationships with leading intellectual, artistic, political, and religious figures, such as Galileo Galilei, Jan I Brueghel, Federico Barocci, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, and Federico Borromeo. A close study of Oddi's papers and printed works offers valuable new insights into mathematical and artistic education, the production and purpose of printed books, the trade in mathematical instruments, the content and context of Flemish cabinet paintings, the collecting and uses of drawings, the complexities of military architecture, and the ways in which friendship and regional identity influenced trade and intellectual life. One of the book's key objectives is to examine the ways in which mathematics and material culture affected late Renaissance scientific culture. A near-exact contemporary of Galileo, Oddi's life and works shed new light on the practice of science in a formative age, especially the growing application of mathematics to the investigation of nature and the substantial cross-pollination between the visual arts and the sciences at the turn of the century. However, although Oddi's career bears striking similarities to that of his better known peer, much of Oddi's interest and historical value lies in the fact that, unlike Galileo, he was not spectacularly innovative and did not become a 'hero of modern science'. As such, he is arguably a better representative of the majority of everyday scientific practitioners active in the period, particularly those whose energetic dissemination of mathematical knowledge established the foundations of the Scientific Revolution by instituting a 'shared knowledge' of mathematics. Through a comparison between Oddi, Galileo, and their peers the book seeks to establish what was general and what was particular about mathematically based science in the late Renaissance, distinguishing between common attitudes on the one hand, and local or personal approaches and practices on the other. 'Mathematics and Material Culture in Late Renaissance Italy' will demonstrate that scientific change in the period was multivalent and contested, embedded not only in the mind but also in materials, governed by friendship as much principle, and determined by place as much as purpose.