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Darrera modificació: 2026-09-16
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Lazaris, Stavros, "The Elusive Original: Differentiation and Identity in Byzantine Scientific Illustrations", Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 75/1 (2025), 6-54.
- Resum
- By reducing the meaning of the word 'mimesis' to the perfect imitation of reality, modern scholars have too often focused on the degree of realism of an image. We then start thinking that, for many Greek and Latin scholars, the ultimate intention of artists was the ὁμοίωσις (or similitudo) between a copy and the original. Inexorably we end up believing that a representation individualises a subject by differentiating it from all others and can lead us to that same subject. In other words, we think we can find the original through a copy, and we view negatively images that cannot do this. My paper assesses whether the notion of visual species individualisation, particularly amongst representations of plants in Greek scientific manuscripts, had any currency for Byzantine scholars. More specifically, after a brief introduction to mimesis of reality in art and its reception in Byzantium, I first focus on how certain images of plants (especially from Dioscorides' De materia medica) are depicted. Secondly, I present some of the ideas of Byzantine scholars that undoubtedly influenced the way in which certain images were depicted in scientific manuscripts. Finally, I consider the importance of captions (textual and visual) in individualisation, in terms of recognising the subject depicted and contributing to the creation of a diachronic identification.
- Matèries
- Història natural - Vegetals
Grec
Història de l'art
Història de la ciència
Manuscrits
- URL
- https://www.brepolsonline.net/content/journals/10.1 ...
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