The Bee Book of Johannes Schepens
Written by Myriam van der Hoek. During our VisionLab at the Allard Pierson Artis Library earlier this year, we all had a look at one of the most beautiful manuscripts in the library’s collection: the bee book. Or so we call it. The official title according to the title-page reads: De groote wonderen Gods, beschouwd in het kleine Diertje, de Honingbye (The great wonders of God, seen in the little animal, the Honeybee). Title-page …
My Desk
By Ellen Pater. A stable surface, yet always changing. Configuring for different tasks. That is my desk. It is where I draw, where I read, where I write, listen to music and drink my coffee. It is where I prepare my prints, engrave copperplates with sharp burins on a sack of sand, or roughen their surface with a rocker to make a mezzotint, tools of a trade that are now accompanied by my grandfather’s old wetting stone to sharpen my burins before use. Other times there is a microscope, to study a…
Great new biography of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
Review by: Eric Jorink In case you were not aware of it yet: 2023 is Antoni van Leeuwenhoek-year. Many activities will be devoted to commemorating the famous microscopist’s death 300 years ago. Among the events are an exhibition at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave; an international conference to be held at the Royal Society, a richly illustrated book edited by our team-members Sietske Fransen and Tim Huisman and a wonderful new biography by Geertje Dekkers, published this week. Cover of ‘Many, small and cu…
Symposium ‘Crawly Creatures in Context,’ 27 October
by: Tiemen Cocquyt and Mieneke te Hennepe The Rijksmuseum’s current exhibition ‘Crawly Creatures’, focuses on the mediaeval and early modern perception on small, easily overlooked, critters, such as: mice, snakes and insects. It was curated by Jan de Hond, curator of History at the Rijksmuseum, Artis Library curator Hans Mulder, and our own research project’s PI (principal investigator), Eric Jorink. The exhibition shows highly detailed representations of insects, three dimensional objects such…
