Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org This publication is openly available online thanks to generous support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Sonia H. Evers Endowment Fund in Renaissance Studies. Renaissance Futurities This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collabora- tion of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the UCLA Library Fund. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. Renaissance Futurities Science, Art, Invention Edited by Charlene Villaseñor Black and Mari-Tere Álvarez UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2020 by Charlene Villaseñor Black and Mari-Tere Álvarez This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Villaseñor Black, C. and Álvarez, M-T. (eds.) Renaissance Futurities: Science, Art, Invention. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.79 Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978–0–520–29698–5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–520–96951–3 (ebook) 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Future is Now: Reflections on Art, Science, Futurity 1 Charlene Villaseñor Black and Mari-Tere Álvarez 1. Moon Shot: From Renaissance Imagination to Modern Reality 9 Mari-Tere Álvarez 2. Machines in the Garden 19 Jessica Riskin 3. Inventing Interfaces: Camillo’s Memory Theater and the Renaissance of Human-Computer Interaction 41 Peter Matussek 4. Futurities, Empire, and Censorship: Cervantes in Conversation with Ovid and Orwell 65 Frederick A. de Armas 5. Anticipating the Future: Leonardo’s Unpublished Anatomical and Mathematical Observations 83 Morteza Gharib, Francis C. Wells, with Mari-Tere Álvarez 6. Medicine as a Hunt: Searching for the Secrets of the New World 100 William Eamon vi CONTENTS 7. The Half-Life of Blue 118 Charlene Villaseñor Black 8. ‘Ingenuity’ and Artists’ Ways of Knowing 130 Claire Farago Notes 151 Bibliography 205 Contributors 233 Index 235 Illustrations 1.1 Artist unknown, title page, engraving from Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna, 1620 10 1.2 Artist unknown, frontispiece and title page, engraving from Francis Goodwin, The Man in the Moone, 2nd edition, 1657 15 1.3 Artist unknown, frontispiece, engraving from Francis Goodwin, Der Fliegen- de Wandersmann nach dem Mond (German translation of Bishop Godwin’s The Man in the Moone, 1659) 15 1.4 Michael van Langren, Map of the Moon, Plenilunii Lumina Austriaca Philip- pica, engraving, 1645 17 3.1 Title page of Giulio Camillo, L’idea del theatro (Florence: Torrentino, 1550) 46 3.2 Sketch of Camillo’s Theater (Reconstruction), from Lu Beery Wenneker, “An Examination of L’idea del theatro of Giulio Camillo, Including an Annotated Translation, with Special Attention to His Influence on Emblem Literature and Iconography,” 1970 47 3.3 T itian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence, ca. 1550, oil on canvas, 75.4 × 173.74 cm (29 3/5" × 68 2/5"). London, National Gallery 48 3.4 Robert Edgar presenting his Memory Theatre One (1985), film still, 1986 57 3.5 Agnes Hegedüs, Memory Theater VR, 1997 60 5.1 Leonardo da Vinci, Notes on the valves of the heart and flow of blood within it, with illustrative drawings, ca. 1513, pen and ink on blue paper. Windsor, Royal Library, MS 19082r 87 vii viii Illustrations 5.2 Leonardo da Vinci, Detail of atrioventricular valve leaflets, ca. 1513, pen and ink on blue paper. Windsor, Royal Library, MS 19074r 89 5.3 Leonardo da Vinci, The heart and lungs dissected to reveal the bronchi and the accompanying bronchial arteries, ca. 1513, pen and ink on blue paper. Windsor, Royal Library, MS 19071r 91 5.4 Leonardo da Vinci, Coordinate system and convention used in deriving equations of motion 96 5.5 Leonardo da Vinci, Prediction of parabolic ballistic trajectories, Codex Madrid I, folio 147r, National Library of Spain 98 5.6 A direct-overlay comparison of trajectories calculated from equation (7) with those depicted by Leonardo for ballistic trajectories for various launch angles 98 6.1 Title page, Francisco Hernández, Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium mexicanorum historia (1651) 102 6.2 Title page, Giambattista Della Porta, Magiae naturalis (Naples, 1589) 103 6.3 Title page, Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna (London, 1620) 105 6.4 Granadilla (Passionflower), Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Historia naturae max- ime peregrinae (Antwerp, 1635) 114 7.1 Hispano-Moresque Deep Dish, ca. 1430, tin-glazed earthenware, 45.72 cm (17 ⅞"). Accession 56.171.162. The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 125 7.2 Hispano-Moresque Basin, mid-15th century, tin-glazed earthenware with copper luster 49.5 cm (19 ½"). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA 125 8.1 Leonardo da Vinci, Sketches for the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; Wheels; a Weir, Dam, or Bridge, ca. 1500, pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, 26.5 × 20 cm (10 7/16"× 7 ⅞"). London, The British Museum 1875–6–12–17 136 8.2 Leonardo da Vinci [?], Christ as Salvator Mundi, oil on panel, 45.4 × 65.6 cm (17 ⅞" × 25 ⅞"). Collection Prince Mohammed bin Salman 144 8.3 Santo Volto of Genoa, Church of San Bartolommeo degli Armeni, Genoa 145 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people and institutions have helped us bring this volume to fruition. It is a pleasure to take this moment to extend our thanks. We initially explored these ideas about art and futurity at two conferences, one supported by UCLA’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in November 2016, and a summer colloquium at the Château de la Bretesche in Missilac, France, in July 2017. The Missilac colloquium took place thanks to the generous support of a Borchard Foundation Summer Colloquium Grant. We were delighted to meet the heads of the Borchard Foundation, Anna Beling, PhD, and Kristen Beling, DDS, who shared their visionary leadership in humanities scholarship with us as well as their enthusiasm for French culture. Without this institutional support, we could not have produced this study. Our meeting during the summer colloquium in a picturesque, fifteenth-cen- tury chateau was a unique opportunity to create dialogue and transdisciplinary points of connection. We carefully selected participants from a wide range of fields in the humanities, sciences, and from the museum world, all thought leaders in their respective disciplines. The summer colloquium participants, their work, and contributions at the symposium contributed greatly to the formation of this volume. We wholeheartedly thank the following colloquium participants: Roger Malina, Professor of Arts and Technology and Professor of Physics at the Univer- sity of Texas at Dallas and Editor Emeritus of the MIT journal Leonardo; Rocio Bruquetas, PhD, Head of Conservation, Museo de Américas; Vanda Vitali, Direc- tor of Canadian Museum Association; Sylvana Barrett, artist and authority on Old Master materials and technique; Cathy Carpenter, producer of contemporary art- ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ists; cardiologist Francis C. Wells and Morteza Gharib, Professor of Aeronautics and Bio-Inspired Engineering at CalTech; François Delarozière, director of the artist-collective Les Machines de l’île in Nantes, France; as well as historian Agnès Marcetteau-Paul, head of Libraries in Nantes and the Jules Verne Museum, who shared with us Leonardo da Vinci notebook fragments held in the city’s library. We especially wish to mention the late physicist and scientific director of “La Caixa” Foundation Jorge Wagensberg who, although too sick to travel, still contributed a paper to be read at the colloquium. The editors would also like to thank UC Press editor Nadine Little for her encouragement. The anonymous peer reviewers provided generous and thought- ful suggestions, for which we are deeply grateful. We are grateful to our intrepid copy editor, Martha Groves. Thanks in no small part to generous grants from the Arcadia Foundation for Open Access and the Sonia H. Evers Endowment Fund in Renaissance Studies, as well as support from UC Press and UCLA, this volume will be available via open access, thus disseminating scholarship to the widest possible audience. In this manner, we hope to ensure that the fruits of the contributors’ labors will generate new thinking for future generations to come. Introduction The Future is Now Reflections on Art, Science, Futurity Charlene Villaseñor Black Mari-Tere Álvarez What can I see more than I have already seen? —Sancho Panza Thou hast seen nothing yet. —Don Quixote —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Chapter 11, Book 1, Part 1 (1605)1 The Renaissance was a period defined, one could argue, by visions of the future. Petrarch’s Letter to Posterity (ca. 1372) and Dante’s Divine Comedy (ca. 1308–20) represent early manifestations of this concern with the future, fame, and posterity, followed by Renaissance historian and humanist Leonardo Bruni’s histories and biographies of the 1440s and Giorgio Vasari’s celebrated Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects of 1550.