Noemi Di TommasoBetween 1500 and 1800, Italy – and Bologna in particular – witnessed a progressive convergence of scientific inquiry and visual culture that led to the production and circulation of images increasingly regarded as reliable forms of evidence. Drawings, illustrations, and other visual media became essential tools for observing, interpreting, and communicating knowledge about the natural world. This course traces the evolution of these visual languages across three centuries, examining both the introduction of new optical instruments, such as the microscope and the telescope, and the growing involvement of women in intellectual, artistic, and natural-historical activities. By exploring the relationship between empirical observation, representation, and knowledge-making, the course investigates how images contributed to shaping scientific authority and credibility in early modern Italy.
To address these themes, Bologna offers an ideal vantage point. Home to one of Europe’s oldest universities and to some of the most remarkable natural-history collections of the early modern period, the city preserves unique evidence of the processes through which observations of nature were transformed into visual knowledge. Students will engage directly with the legacy of the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose hundreds of watercolour illustrations, now preserved in the University Library of Bologna, constitute one of the largest and most ambitious visual archives of nature produced in early modern Europe. Attention will also be devoted to Aldrovandi’s herbarium and to the Botanical Garden of Bologna – among the oldest in Europe and founded by Aldrovandi himself – where practices of collecting, classifying, describing, and depicting natural specimens converged in the production of knowledge.
Furthermore, by situating the Bolognese – and more broadly Italian – context within a comparative European and global framework, students will examine how visual representations, from botanical illustrations and anatomical drawings to telescopic and microscopic images, became increasingly central to the authority and legitimacy of natural knowledge. Drawing itself will be approached as a scientific practice, analysed both in its historical development and in its different forms of production: manuscript and printed, executed by scholars themselves or commissioned from professional artists. The course also devotes significant attention to women’s contributions to the visual culture of science. Through figures such as the naturalist Francesca Fontana Aldrovandi, the poetess and mathematician Maria Selvaggia Borghini, and the anatomist and wax modeller Anna Morandi Manzolini students will explore the many ways in which women participated in processes of observation, representation, collecting, and knowledge exchange.
Finally, a central feature of the course is its emphasis on the methodology of the history of science. Working with original sources, scientific illustrations, manuscripts, correspondence, and archives, students will learn how historians reconstruct the practices through which knowledge was produced, validated, and circulated.
The course also includes a study visit to Milan, where students will explore the Botanical Garden of Brera, the Brera Astronomical Observatory, and the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology. These sites offer a unique perspective on the development of botany, astronomy, and scientific instrumentation from the early modern period to the present day.
Designed for students interested in history, art history, visual culture, museum studies, and the social history of science, the course combines historical inquiry with direct engagement with the places, objects, and images through which knowledge of nature was made visible, credible, and shareable.
