The Art of Discovery. Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe
Maren Elisabeth Schwab, Anthony GraftonThe Art of Discovery tells the stories of the Renaissance antiquarians who turned material remains of the ancient world into sources for scholars & artists, inspirations for palaces & churches, & objects of pilgrimage & devotion. Maren Elisabeth Schwab & Anthony Grafton bring to life some of the most spectacular finds of the age, such as Nero’s Golden House & the wooden placard that was supposedly nailed to the True Cross. They take readers into basements, caves, & cisterns, explaining how digs were undertaken & shedding light on the methods antiquarians—and the alchemists and craftspeople they consulted—used to interpret them. What emerges is not an origin story for modern archaeology or art history but rather an account of how early modern artisanal skills & technical expertise were used to create new knowledge about the past & inspire new forms of art, scholarship, & devotion in the present.
The Art of Discovery challenges the notion that Renaissance antiquarianism was strictly a secular enterprise, revealing how the rediscovery of Christian relics & the bones of martyrs helped give rise to highly interdisciplinary ways of examining & authenticating objects of all kinds.